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Friday, December 28, 2001
Better the devil you know
One more musical selection for today: Kylie's genius Better the Devil You Know as ably covered by Steps, who I not-so-secretly love. RIP! Here's hoping for a solo album from the lovely Claire.
Note for aghast indie boys and girls who are my pals and who read this: I am listening to selections from John Peel's Festive Fifty to try to balance out the madness that is Steps. Melys, Pulp, Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura (hi Gavin! YOU BEAT NEW ORDER!) etc etc. Do not be afeared.
Posted at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
Kirsty moments
The inimitable Kirsty MacColl died a year ago on my birthday.
How dare she.
A week or so late, here are some of my favorite Kirsty moments.
The bf found this extended 12" remix version of "A New England" on AudioGalaxy the other day; the guitars go all genius at about 1:16.
Soho Square; the saddest of her many sad sad songs.
He's On the Beach; one of the most perfect P!O!P! songs of the last 20 years.
They Don't Know About Us as performed by Tracey Ullman; in my mind, arguably the most perfect pop moment of all time. or at the very least Top Three.
* * * Look, here's some insane stuff I wrote late last night when my cable was out! * * *
I'm on hold with Comcast (it has been 40 minutes so far; I'm typing this post in Apple Note Pad), my cable provider and ISP. At midnight tonight, their deal with @home ended and they became their own ISP outright.
The phone message you get when you call up goes something like this: Thank you for calling Comcast. We are currently in the process of switching our servers over to our exciting new Comcast dot net service. You will experience an outage of your internet service for approximately 20 minutes. For more information, visit www.comcast.net slash something something something.
VISIT COMCAST.NET? TO FIND OUT WHEN MY INTERNET SERVICE WILL BE TURNED BACK ON? WHAT? Sigh.
Sit and spin, Comcast. Sit and spin.
By the way, I think I am listening to a muzak version of "Walking on the Sun" by Smash Mouth. It's vaguely terrifying.
* * *
I won't even comment about the bizarre little interface that Comcast shipped to me on CD in order to bring about the changeover to the new service.
OK, I will comment.
Changing ISPs on one's Mac isn't a terribly arcane process. If it's for a high-speed access account over ethernet, it really can't take much more than one trip to the TCP/IP Control Panel to enter a couple of stock settings provided by the ISP.
So why do I have to play with a rainbow colored Wizard which just tried to THROW ALL MY BOOKMARKS in the Trash FOR NO REASON and WITH NO WARNING?
The AppleScipts that are doing the grunt work were obviously written by a hack; blindly trashing files and folders with nary a care in the world, and unable to function on any disk other than the Startup Disk.
I guess it's common in PC Land for installers to just expect to do everything on the C:\ drive or whatever the fuck.
But here in Mac Land, we like a little more flexibility. And we DON'T LIKE WIZARDS.
55 minutes on hold! At least now The Fifth Wheel is on.
* * *
The Fifth Wheel is over. I am still on hold.
I have been staring at this screen. Can't get address from the DHCP server. Make sure all cables are connected, then click the "Retry" button.
Retry. Retry. Retry.
Posted at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)
Thursday, December 27, 2001
Thanks
Thanks to everybody who wrote to me after that last post... I would've written more but for the whole Blogger hack situation.
I have a template update I've been working on, and some more new mp3s, just as soon as I straighten out all my FTP passwords and make sure everything is in order.
I hope these crazed hAx0rs, hell-bent on world domination, aren't using my measly FTP space to store nuclear bomb diagrams or something. Whee, scary.
Posted at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 25, 2001
Parental Units
Family = tiresome.
I think I'm pretty much over these people here.
Isn't that a terrible day, when you realize that your folks aren't All-Knowing, All-Powerful, Beneficently Shining Adults? That they are just sort of boring ordinary people? I think after that day, you get to know your parents as Regular People, relearn everything about them from Their Level, and that's really cool. And I think you're supposed to realize that that "terrible day" is actually a Great Day. It's the day you become an adult. I think.
Until you realize that your parents are tiresome people with short fuses and uninteresting lives. People without any hobbies who are constantly worried about ridiculous things. Crap drivers who are mostly disliked or vaguely tolerated by their neighbors. And not in a fun-wacky-ha-ha-aren't-they-kooky kind of way, either.
Some parents are onto something. Mine aren't. Why don't they just get divorced already? Why don't they just kick my brother out of the house? Why are we defrosting big pieces of beef on the kitchen table an hour before we were supposed to be eating? Which my dad with his bad teeth won't even be able to chew anyway? There should be some positive things to outweigh all the nagging things, right? But I can't find them. They don't say "love"... they don't talk to one another, or to me. They sent me to the drugstore today to buy myself a birthday card. My birthday was last week.
Quite frankly, the reason I haven't introduced the bf to them is more out of a desire to build my own family without them than out of typical gay angst.
Merry fucking Christmas! I'll be locked in my (unfinished, still-has-primer-on-the-walls-seven-years-after-moving-in) "bedroom" playing Bubble Bobble and missing my fella and his wacky-ha-ha family and thinking about all the places I would rather be, while my mother cries downstairs and my dad and uncle watch Independence Day in 5.1 Stereo Surround Sound and my brother sleeps all day in his underwear.
Posted at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
Holy flying fuck!
I just got my holiday bonus at work. Whee!
I have to also add that I had the loveliest birthday yesterday... the bf decorated the house with orange balloons while I was sleeping, and sent me perfect roses... AND he got me the Twin Peaks DVD set that just came out! Hence no blogging yesterday ;.
Posted at 02:34 PM | Comments (1)
Monday, December 17, 2001
"It...didn't seem believable to me..."
Posted at 01:35 AM | Comments (0)
Meddle Muddle, Part Two
OK, I've meddled with most of the stuff I wanted to. There are still going to be broken images around though, sorry. They'll have to wait until morning, the poor dears.
Posted at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)
TELEGRAM FROM A PARTAY
Food successful STOP Even found banana leaves STOP Was tired and not much fun meself though STOP Let's do it again sometime STO.
Posted at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)
Friday, December 14, 2001
Meddle Muddle, Part One
Warning: broken links ahead. I'm rearranging all my files now, finally. To get my mind off of cooking, I guess. New mp3 en route, too. Still no luck with the banana leaves by the way.
Posted at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
Penny drive
Hey! Don't forget to donate money as part of Sheldon's penny drive! I'm going to roll my nickels on Sunday after this party madness is over.
Posted at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)
Banana Leaves, Part Two
Believe it or not, I now have a staffer from Martha Stewart Living trying to track down banana leaves for me. Thanks Amanda.
Posted at 02:36 PM | Comments (3)
Shopping list
Now I've fallen in deep, slow silent sleep/it's killing me, I'm dying
Holy maudlin lyrics, Batman! No, really, I swear I haven't gone goth on you all; it's just a Badly Drawn Boy lyric. Chosen because I feel like death warmed over today. Nay, I feel like death that has been stewed for four and a half hours in a stockpot full of peeled and sliced ginger. Possibly because I spent from midnight until 4:30am stewing peeled and sliced ginger in a stockpot. Possibly.
I'm having this dinner party on Saturday and I have decided to make a ridiculous amount of complicated food. I have been desperately trying to summon my inner-Nigella (or at least my inner-Jamie) but to very little avail. I've charted out all my recipes, decided when everything needs to be started, picked up all my ingredients (except the bloody fucking corn starch. I'm not going all the way back to the supermarket for a tablespoon of corn starch! Maybe I can borrow some from a neighbor). I've made (well, started; it's a long process) my Candied Ginger, and I even made a big fabulous tray of lovely Thai ice cream. The ice cream is insane, it's made with coconut milk, vanilla pods, and CREAMED CORN but you'd never know it from the taste! Those wacky Thai folk! I love them.
Tonight I'm going to a quickie birthday party and then it's off to see the Royal Tenenbaums, so I don't think I'll get any more cooking done until the morning. Sigh. I hope I can get it all done. If not, I'll just call Saigon Cafe for takeout and stash the containers in the dumpster next door.
The menu, for your edification (it's all appetizer-y/tasting things, since I don't have a big enough dining table for everyone to have a Proper Meal): shrimp & pork salad rolls, pistachio-chicken and bitter-orange-pork satay, scallops in plum sauce on scallion pancakes, curried chicken and bamboo wrapped in banana leaves (if, that is, I can find some fucking banana leaves in this city), coconut rice balls, sweet-spicy almond mix, a lentil soup, some yummy flatbread things, potato stuffed indian paneer, three dipping sauces (peanut sauce, curried yogurt, and mango chutney). For desert, ginger pavlovas with the aforementioned Thai ice cream and spicy candied ginger, plus cardamom flavored whipped cream (yo, cardamom is EXPENSIVE). Drinks are Thai salty-rum-limeade, cardamom eggnog, and hot & iced espresso with sweetened condensed milk.
If we're not entirely soused by that point, we'll head down to the local dive bar, Uncle Joe's, to toss back a few more.
Hope it doesn't rain!
p.s. If you're reading this and you feel like trekking out to Jersey City for a party, let me know. I'll throw another shrimp on the barbie for ya.
Posted at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
Thursday, December 13, 2001
pr0n
Oi, you, the one searching for the pr0n. Make yourself known!
In unrelated news, I am currently busy trying to help international globetrotting superstar Elisa get her blog up to speed. Good things coming.
Posted at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Strutting?
So. One would think that having a kind of it's-getting-cold-out-and-my-throat-hurts kind of cold would be good for one's online diary, no? Lots of time spent sequestered on the couch with nothing but a PowerBook and a cable modem, right? Wrong.
I have a few more mp3s to post, but I promised myself that I would reorganize all my directories and crap before I went beyond three. For tidyness's sake. Or something. So I've been working on that. Instead of writing anything interesting. Maybe I'll finish it up at work today.
Quick weekend recap: Lots of coughing keeping me and the bf up all night. Oceans 11 on cable: bad. Pal Joey on cable: good. Watch more shows on cable. Burn five CDs of mp3s. Watch more cable. Make nice Portuguese cassoulet for dinner. Watch more cable. Go outside twice: once to go through piles of furniture at home of pal Heidi who has suddenly decided she must move upstate STAT and also become a Minimalist simultaneously (handy!), once to go to Ground (hipster cafe) for art show featuring works of local tattoo artists with pal Laurel. Smoke about 9 cigarettes (100's no less; fuck you Duane Reade and your poor holiday cigarette stocks!) in 30 minutes at Ground, feel ill. Switch to network TV for ABC's Sunday night schedule. Swoon over Bradley Cooper and Michael Vartan on Alias. Go to bed. Cough some more. Whee.
Tomorrow night: Phil's Strutter party at Lot 61. Who's coming?
Posted at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
Thursday, December 06, 2001
SCSI Beast
SO. This morning I planted myself down to watch Nigella Bites (the posh accent! the utter lack of measurements in any recipes! the cute imac in her book room! This show is food-porn at its most hardcore.) and do some serious scanning.
My scanner is an ancient SCSI beast that threatens to break a bookshelf in the living room. I've toyed with trading it in for a cute slim USB model but I can't bring myself to do it. USB scanning is too slow, and all the Firewire models I've seen are just as large as the SCSI beast.
So anyway, I reached for the SCSI beast and the little Firewire converter jobby that makes it work with my PowerBook. I selected the things I wanted to scan, laid them out nicely on the coffee table, fired up Photoshop. And then promptly realized that I never installed the scanning software on the PowerBook; that I can't remember what the scanning software was called; that I have no hope of remembering where the disc with the software on it even IS.
Sigh. Wasted morning.
