Beth.

Here you are.

They will get better, I promise.

Old Friends

I've been thinking about the records I used to love recently.

That is, I still am fond of them, but had sort of forgotten there were still bands existing attached to the albums I knew and gave some thought to... so in that vein, I'd suggest looking up people whose work you've cared about and haven't heard anything about in a long while.

They're possibly still working, and maybe they've gotten better.

Firewater's "The Golden Hour" is an album I can't stop listening to, after loving two earlier releases and then losing track of them.

MC Solaar also didn't stop making albums after the single solitary one I bought in college, and they remain good, groundbreaking, and in fact great work... more than I thought I could expect to find.

That's about all, I guess.

That and I'm now figuring out how to set up a wireless network at home, with a pish (cheap) netbook gotten "for work", and also for the heck of it. My fiscal discipline makes some sense sometimes... I can do work for a consulting job I have now as a result of a friend doing hopefully both of us a favor.

In other news, finding out in a few days whether I have a job for the long term; I may have either seemed like the wrong guy, or seemed overqualified for it... I hope it's the latter, and that I then convinced the interviewer he was wrong, and I was less brilliant, unique, vibrant and gifted than I seemed.

It's an odd skill to have to master, but finding a way to fall into the extremely narrow band of appropriate skill level is vital and difficult in this blasted wasteland of a job market.

And Another Thing

I also wanted to mention that I was the victim of a layoff round last summer, and no longer am anything but a desperate striver. It's very Victorian/depression-era in feeling. I'm not liking it.

Wikicize!

I have a little wikipedia experiment going on...

It is in two parts.

Part the First: I have edited a page about China to (accurately) reflect the truth about one of the most polluted cities on earth.

I am waiting to see how long it might take to get taken down. Whether deservedly or not, it probably will get struck with an edit attempt... This most polluted city is listed at this link... Taiyuan.

I'd like to hear your stories about potentially being edited on a wiki-format to be reduced from telling the truth to watching a lie.

Before I edited the Taiyuan page, the only mentions of environment were related to the awesomeness of the parks. You might see the sentence I added. (BTW, if anyone has a good guide on markup rules and cribsheets for Wikipedia editing please send them. That would be great.)

So there you go.

The second project, still to be fully implemented, will involve some of you who know your marching orders already. Your orders await. Results will follow.

Pride Goeth Before the Swollen Chest and Head

I was watching Antiques Roadshow with the Wife the other day, one of the appraisees was there with a painting they wanted looked at by the appraiser, and the story they told made me reflect for a bit:

As a person of German descent (and citizenship, for that matter,) I have to tell you my sense of pride in my heritage puffs up a little bigger every time a sentence at the beginning of a story ends with:

"...because the Germans were coming..."

Listen for it, it's one of the most popular phrases in all of history and historiography... from the Roman Empire through today, it's still as good as it ever was.  Well, today being defined as "sometime in the 20th century", but still.  It's even in Casablanca, can you ask for more than that?

The number of phrases for which it can be used as a closer are nearly limitless:

"This was hidden in a cellar..."

"We drank all the wine we had left..."

"The archives were burned..."

"The able-bodied men all hid in the mountains..."

"Gasoline stores were set to the torch..."

You can play the home game version of this...

Just in Case You Weren't Getting Enough of Me Not Posting Here:

Clearly I'm not busy enough to add content somewhere else, so please, feel free to check out other stuff I think, specifically about food at cheapgreengourmet.blogspot.com.

I have some things I want to get off my chest about the banking crisis, GM, and my own now precarious state of existence. They will follow in the next day or so.

At Long Last, Lover

So, I didn't die.

The year has been a frenzy of complex experiences.

So, Happy New Year, and stay tuned for new things here and in a new space as well.

I used to always apologize to my journals when I was a kid for not writing often enough. I told myself I would never do that here, so I won't.

It helps with the guilt to know that no one is out there, so YAY!