The year of setting things right

In the spirit of change and forward momentum, I’m going to undertake to clean up a very old mess tomorrow afternoon. There’s only one reader who really knows what I mean by this, but I wanted to say it here anyway. That reader has been a source of support, know it or not and deserves my thanks and more.
It’s not everyday that we get a chance to undo rash decisions from our past. Here’s to actually taking opportunities to set things right when they present themselves, whether it’s by taking a phone call in your office after hours just before your birthday or by thumbing through a college coursebook. Thanks, you know who you are.

I’ve just discovered Regina Spektor. And I’m kinda blown away a little bit. The song “Ghost Of Corporate Future” is great.~

An aggregator for MP3 blogs. You can Podcast the whole site as well. I’ve been gaining an interest in these things lately, perhaps spurred on by this “Thursday tunes” silliness I do every week now. ~

Blackboxvoting.org just published its findings on voting irregularities in Palm Beach in 2004. It’s just as bad as you thought, maybe worse. ~

Paul Ford calmly and thoughtfully reminds us of stuff that we’ve forgotten, and helps us to look at the world in ways that we might not otherwise.~

If you’re a beta tester and you’d like to see some of the changes that I’ve made to Longing hit me up and I’ll send you a link. If you’re not a beta tester, have at it. ~

The most popular essay in the history of Atlantic Monthly’s online presence. There’s a lot of good information here regarding introverts, of whose number I suppose I am.

With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. “People person” is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like “guarded,” “loner,” “reserved,” “taciturn,” “self-contained,” “private”—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.

Perhaps a bit politicized (I don’t feel like the extroverts are out to get me like he does) but nonetheless a good read about what it’s like to be something other than what you hear about all the time. ~

Mr. Jalopy purchased a jar of random kid-treasures for a $1 at a garage sale. He’s taken a photo of each item and placed them up on Flickr. (via Mr. Jalopy and BoingBoing) ~

Jake takes great photos. Here’s even more proof. Even Streetsy isn’t so bad when he’s behind the lens. ~

Blog what you love. Some good points from Derek for all of us low-rung bloggers.~

These are three of my favorite images on the entire internet, and have been for years. I’d forgotten all about these for a long time until I found them in my Safari bookmarks. I always hope that couple is still together. (via digifox) ~

Yahoo! has released an open source user interface library for use in building web applications. Lots of nice Ajax toys, as well as some good animation classes. There are so many of these out now, but it’s nice to have one that’s so well documented. ~

Behold, the $1000 ice cream sundae. (via DailyOlive) ~

Dear Readers…

This is one of those “hold the line” entries that’s so obnoxious, but I’ll do it anyway. You are all owed some entries including one about Bluestem and the 99% wonderful 1% “oh crap I’m stuck in Atlanta” weekend spent in Kansas City. I’ll leave it at that. Until then…

Did you see Dick Cheney’s lost his mind and he’s capping other hunters now? ~

Or that we’re so busy bullying the rest of the world that we’ve started to suck at sports? ~

How about where some nut job tried to bring a mummified human head into Florida in her luggage? She said it was to keep away the evil spirits. Now, I’ve seen a lot of horror movies and it seems to me that having dried human heads around just makes them come around more often, not stay away. First rule of keeping out bad mojo: remove all dried human heads from the premises. I could be wrong. ~

Profile of Malcom Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point) by Rachel Donadio of the New York Times. I’m a huge Blink fan; I think not many theories in modern anthropology match “temporary autism” for the power to, pound for pound, explain combat and police decision making under fire. ~

I keep trying to write a cohesive post about why I hate Sex In The City. Mostly I hate anything that glorifies the childish behavior of a group of selfish people who should know better, treating each other like shit in the service of getting off. There’s something like that already; it’s called real life. Gah. Cheer us up for once, you sick bastards at HBO. I say this because apparently they’re re-packaging the episodes by theme now for DVD ( you know, Greatest Breakups, Greatest Lustings, Greatest Episodes Where It Looks Like The Emotionally Crippled One Might Have Caught Something And You Have To Guess Which One We Meant By ‘Emotionally Crippled’) and everybody’s linking to them, including (mysteriously) largeheartedboy. While I refuse to link to this tripe I feel obliged to vent my spleen about it. I think you have a little on your keyboard. Sorry. Let me get that. ~

According to several doctors (well, Canadian doctors) stretching before exercise can actually be a bad thing, and some people don’t get anything out of cardiovascular exercise. Also, the Canadians spell “exercise” really funny. ~

To ensure a total divorce from reality, this year’s Super Bowl is being broadcast on a five second delay. Take that, would-be accidental boob flashers. ~

Brief piece on Harper Lee, who’s getting a lot of renewed attention due to her rep as pal number one to some other author. ~

It’s that time again. The State Of The Union drinking game. ~

It’s our new trademark, S and I: We seem to find ourselves in weird places doing off-kilter activities and loving every minute of it. With someone who is willing to look past the irony and obvious kitschy overtones things like flea markets and over-the-top bowling alleys can be as wonderful as any place you can think of. And those are just two places in which we found ourselves laughing and goofing off on this meeting in Kentucky.
It also makes me realize that finding all those dangerously hip flea markets for my favorite TV show is probably a really hellacious full time job, and isn’t as easy as pointing the car at the nearest 60 foot sign emblazened with the words “MOST AWESOME FLEA MARKET EVER. SERIOUSLY. TURN RIGHT YOKEL.” The one we visited had a vibe reminiscent of a dollar store throwing up into an airplane hangar, but with puppy adoption thrown in for good measure. (I suppose some of the more enterprising locals see this as the sale of both companionship *and* livestock; imagine the space savings!) It also helped us to understand that, given enough time, anything can be made camouflage and/or orange.
Louisville itself however, weighing in at approximate Raleigh/Durham size, is not altogether bad. Just off Muhammad Ali Blvd. is Fourth Street Live, a sort of outdoor atrium built under the canopy of some of the taller buildings in downtown. With lots of shopping and food, including a British pub and the aforementioned over the top bowling alley, there’s something for every sort of bored out of towner.
In other (but related) news I am a bad bowler, and slightly competitive. ~

The 50 most loathesome people in the US. My favorite is the sentence for Paris Hilton’s crimes against humanity:

“[to be]Locked in a room with a high steel ceiling which lowers a centimeter per hour, until she either solves a Rubik’s cube or is crushed; whichever comes first.”

This is how our “allies” do it down on the Gaza strip.

This essay says a lot of interesting things, and they’re all sort of nested inside one another. I think it’s more than a bit Christian, too. But it’s a good read and worth dissecting.

I’ve read a lot of different theories about this, but I find that my meditation gets a bit more rapidly to the core if it’s accompanied by music. This is not something you put a stopwatch on, but I usually find that I’ve been at if for about 20 minutes when I stop and look up. With music I estimate that I get to the kind of place I want to be–the one where it feels like I’ve been on vacation for two weeks–in about half that time when I’m listening to music. And right now nothing works the charm that Sigur Ros does. Their new album, Takk, is phenominal and majestic and by the middle of the third track on a good day I have no idea I’m listening to them anymore.

Thursday Tunes:
m83 - “don’t save us from the flames”
pretty girls make graves - “The Nocturnal House” (TBR April 2006)

Apparently all the noise about the Apple/Postal Service commercial ripoff was for naught. It’s the same directors. No one said anything because SubPop didn’t even know until recently.

In 1975 Russian engineers sent Venera 9 to Venus. Once there it transmitted telemetry data for 52 minutes before failing in the harsh environment.

InsideOut is a project to put cameras in the hands of migrant workers in Singapore. (via designobserver)