Kablammo!

My car gets 40 furlongs to the pint, or just under 46 fathoms per teaspoon. (Or, if you prefer, 37 cubits/mL; or 37.5 cricket pitches per shot.)

Any way you slice it, that’s pretty good mileage.

So we have:

• reception / receive
• deception / deceive
• perception / perceive
• conception / conceive
• interception / intercept???

What’s the deal with intercept? Shouldn’t it be interceive? Why does it get to be so special?

Looks like I still have a job today. Hooray?

So it’s that time of whatever again.

1. The Rolling Stones — “Jumpin’ Jack Flash (live)”
   If they were old already in 1991 when they recorded this, they must be downright ancient by now. And yet they have so much practice rocking that I guess it’s just second nature by now. Though as you might imagine the song loses a lot of its anger and urgency when the performers age 25 years.
2. The Pixies — “I Bleed”
   I’m pretty sure that what made The Pixies so great was their complete and utter lack of any musical knowledge whatsoever. Luckily, that approach worked great for them, and in their music you can hear every band of the 90s a decade earlier.
3. Smashing Pumpkins — “Mayonnaise”
   Decent song, but sadly it’s not actually about the condiment in question.
4. The Viscounts — “Harlem Nocturne”
   I love spring reverb, but what I like even more is a nice and throaty saxophone sound. Thankfully this song has both in spades. Also, this song (or one very like it) was clearly a big influence on Aavikko.
5. The Modern Jazz Quartet — “Autumn in New York”
   Go go gadget vibraphone
6. Hawksley Workman — “Tarantulove”
   Hawksley at his dirtiest and sultriest. Fucking great.
7. The Kinks — “Come Dancing”
   It begins and ends with a swaying calypso beat, and a guitar-organ combination that’s clearly meant to imitate a steel drum. As far as that goes, it’s quite well done and a very enjoyable song. But what makes it really shine is the middle eight, where they bring in a crunchy electric guitar playing a minor cadence or something. The change of key and tone is magnificent, and makes the brass section that comes in for the ending sound even happier in comparison.
8. Koer — “Mine munni”
   It’s basically a bunch of cursing over a basic punk beat, but again the bridge is just sublime. Ford Sierra . . .
9. Miles Davis — “Flamenco Sketches”
   Woo trumpet
10. Ministry — “Faith Collapsing”
11. Mussorgsky — “The Little Hut on Chicken’s Legs”
    Goddamn, Modest kicked some ass.

In other news, things are going pretty well.

So I’ve basically been offered an ultimatum, and it’s entirely up to me to determine which way things will progress. The requirement for the ‘good’ result is eminently doable, I just have to bring myself to do it. Yet sometimes it feels like this is what I’m hearing:

“Sisyphus, if you don’t push that rock up the hill an extra time next week, we’ll take it away from you and you’ll never push another rock up another hill again.”

Faut-il imaginer Sisyphe heureux?

I wish I knew what I wanted. And I wish I knew which is a worse punishment: having my rock taken away completely, or having it replaced with a heavier one.

Yesterday was quite a good day; today was not.

I woke up with a sore throat, there was a riot going on, the Suns lost last night, and here it is practically 7pm and I’m still at work and there’s plenty of shit I need to get done by Monday and a guy who should have called me today to make both of our lives much easier never did and this whole weekend I’m already going to be plenty busy as it is and now I got «Ei ole üksi ükski maa» stuck in my head which considering I was exhausted and out of sorts already has made me really just want to go home.

Homne varn on tõepoolest juba kuhjaga täis, ja ei mahuta mitte midagit juurde. Ehk tuleb varna kuidagi suurendada.

The best part of the playoffs last year was watching Barbosa play. Thus far it looks like this year will be no different. He’s a great player and getting better all the time, but more importantly he clearly loves what he does and has a blast out there on the court. (And interestingly enough, we were born on the same day.)

In other news, I badly want the Heat to lose and I got a shameful amount of schadenfreude from Shaq fouling out in Game 1. I didn’t think it was possible to match the combination of Shaq and Kobe in terms of smugness and a sense of entitlement, but apparently Kobe’s share in that equation is roughly equaled by Dwyane, Zo, Payton, and Walker, when you add them all up.

Two weeks ago I felt happy to be alive, at peace with the world, and generally more content—with life in general, but also with myself—than I had in a long time. The proximate cause for this, of course, was reading Jailbird and God Bless You, Mr Rosewater back-to-back and essentially uninterrupted. In other words, I had Kurt Vonnegut to thank, and I was quite appreciative.

So it was that, a few days later, I decided not to mourn his death.

Was it sad? Of course. The death of an inspiration, a hero, an artist cannot but be a sad occasion. But Vonnegut’s is a legacy to be celebrated and, after all, he is up in heaven now.

As it is, I was lucky enough to be left with the following:

Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.

and

God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

I think he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

So while I wasn’t upset to learn of his death, what did upset me was finding out he spent the last few weeks of his life suffering from severe and fatal head trauma.

Jenny 3:15