bindlestiffs

Music for Mondays

2012-01-24T17:39:20Z

(It's Monday. In my mind.)

During my last trip to the motherland to secure precious Coney I-Land coneys and frozen custard, I happened upon "Young Blood" by The Naked and Famous.

Look at 'em. You can trust these guys and gal to rock you.

Being that Tulsa was in a hundred year heat wave, my brain had partially melted and I cannot now remember if I heard this song on commercial (i.e. Clear Channel or Shamrock) radio, or if it was on the Risk! podcast. Either way, I slammed the brakes on the rented Nissan in the middle of Peoria and proceeded to hunt for signs of nearby wi-fi. A clump of fixed-speed bikes. The hawk-like ornamentation on a shirtless dude's back. Truckers' hats in pristine condition atop expensively mismanaged coifs, followed by piercings and bushy beard. The pack of hispters, when not in motion - such as performing a Critical Mass bike ride, or ironically playing Jenga - often rest near available streams of wi-fi where they can use the hot-spot to digest freegan-foraged nutrients and update Foursquare.

Having found such a hipster pride, I dipped my iPhone into the stream and ponied up the $.99 for song. And I haven't looked back since. Really. It's weird. Can you tell me if there's anything back there?

Music For Mondays

2012-01-16T16:05:39Z

We now accept it is as inevitable that any change to Facebook elicits an enormous outcry from the hundreds of millions of freeloaders, err, users of the service. Just consider the totally factual data:

But personally, I've been unperturbed by most of the changes (I could do without the mandatory prostate exam to create an event, but whatever). The side bar scroller especially makes a lot of people antsy.

But the side bar is great. A few minutes watching your friends comment on their friends' pics will introduce you to a ton of hot girls or boys you can perv on.

Or occasionally, help you find some new music.

And such is today's case.

Meet Gotye and Kimbra. They're antipodal, they're young, hot, and they want your love.http://kimbramusic.com/

Gotye's official site is here.

Kimbra's official site is here.

Bad Advice, part 1

2012-01-16T14:22:19Z

Never look a gift horse in the mouth
Horrible advice. Just ask the Trojans. Oh wait, you can't. Because they followed this adage.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Let's ask lepers, paraplegics, the homeless, Somalis surviving on 900 calories a day if the tragic events that left them in their current situation made them stronger. This one is demonstrably false, and more often than not, meant to convince the sayer. Or it's a cheap line to console someone whose boyfriend or girlfriend just jumped them. Probably not something you'd say to a soldier who'd lost three friends and two limbs on an IED outside Helmand province.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Um, no. If you shoot for the moon and miss, one of three things will happen:

1) If your angle of trajectory and momentum are high enough, you'll break Earth orbit and get caught up in some solar orbit, eventually running out of oxygen, water, or nutrients;

2) If you have better control of your craft, you might be able to get into a decent return trajectory and make it back to the blue marble; or

3) You get pulled in by Earth's gravity and burn up on re-entry.

It's the exception that proves the rule.

This is pretty ridiculous, but there's at least a reason for it. The word 'prove' has shifted meaning over the years, such that a word that once meant 'to test' now means 'to show something is true'. So we should say "It's the exception that tests the rule," which makes way more sense. It's not so much the saying that's bad, it's the people saying it.

You gather more flies with honey than vinegar.

You get a lot more with shit than either.

When God closes a door, he opens a window.

There's a reason we go in and out of a building through a door. Windows are smaller and less convenient and probably more dangerous for egress. Gee, thanks God. I'm sure you had a great reason for laying me off from my job and taking away my insurance while my son has leukemia; a part-time job at Wal-mart is really generous of you to offer.

Everything happens for a reason.

No. Everything that happens has a cause, yes. Looking for a hidden meaning is a fallacy of logic. Huh, my flight got canceled because of a hurricane. There must be some reason for that.

Mornings Are Awesome.

2012-01-11T11:17:02Z

Encapsulation: five

2011-12-31T09:20:56Z

Eighteen percent of the the year was spent out of Korea.

(Winged_eel suggested the layout for this graphic.)

Encapsulation: four

2011-12-31T08:51:47Z

Does romantic frustration lead to artistic output? The data suggests it does.

Encapsulation: three

2011-12-31T07:54:26Z

Efforts were made, though.

Encapsulation: two

2011-12-31T06:38:14Z

2011 was not the best year for romance.

Encapsulation: one

2011-12-31T06:19:53Z

I'm working on a series of graphics to review two thousand eleven. Here's one of them. I'd actually like to do this as Flash, but I really don't have the time to get re-learn the app.

Laos

2011-11-28T01:08:43Z

Here I am going in Laos at the Gibbon experience. The first video is me entering the treehouse. Up next is Mike D. entering the treehouse via the dinning room window. Then, we have a tour of the tree house given by Mike D. After that is video from another zipline looking at our treehouse. The final two videos are us leaving the jungle, riding on top of the Land Rover.

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Music Monday: Y▲C H T

2011-11-07T16:16:07Z

The band YACHT (or Y▲CHT) comes to us from Portland via Texas and LA. They might not be the best lyricists, but their music's catchy and fun (e.g. 'Dystopia', 'Paradise Engineering'), with a couple you'll want to skip (I'm looking at you, 'One Step').

I first learned of them on NPR's All Songs Considered podcast. You can see their Tiny Desk Concert(which is awesome series, by the by) here.

Enjoy. And you're welcome.

There are 2 songs in the video, Utopia and Dystopia. I skipped it forward to Dystopia, but the first song is pretty good too).

Official site.

Laws of Discourse: Law 1 - "The Quantum Credibility Principle"

2011-06-06T04:51:39Z

For some time now, I've noticed certain truths (or what I perceive as truths) about conversation. More specifically, about the credibility of the information shared within a conversation. To that end, I am going to be compiling a list of these 'laws'. These are still in the rough stage and need to be workshopped, so to speak, so see what you think and let me know.

Law 1 - The Quantum Credibility Principle

In any conversation not about physics, if someone other than a physicist mentions quantum mechanics, everything they've said to that point is probably wrong.
Corollary: If the conversation is about spirituality, everything they've said is definitely wrong.

Bad Lessons

2011-04-28T10:07:00Z

Recently on Facebook, this copypasta has been going around:

How do you expect kids to listen to their parents... Tarzan lives half naked in the woods, Cinderella comes back home at midnight, Pinocchio lies all the time, Aladdin is the king of thieves, Batman drives at 200 mph, Sleeping beauty is lazy, and Snow white lives with 7 guys.. We shouldn't be surprised when kids misbehave! They get it from their story books. Copy this on your wall if you laughed.

Awful grammar aside (who doesn't understand that three commas is not a substitute for a question mark?), the viral text does point out something I've been talking about casually for years: folk tales teach horrible lessons.

Consider The Ugly Duckling. An errant egg ends up in a duck nest. When it hatches, the duck looks really different than his (her?) siblings, who, of course, treat the weird one poorly. This plays on fears/discomfort with stepchildren and adopted children that a surprising number of folk and fairy tales are obsessed with. But of course, the duckling grows up to be a swan. The moral: everything works out if you grow up beautiful. It also posits that swans are better than ducks, so maybe a kind of class lesson there too, given the jealousy and admiration of their formerly ugly sibling by the other ducks.

How about Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and several others? A beautiful princess is put into

peril, usually over jealousy or the twisted machinations of an evil stepmother. Despite the damsel's best efforts, she is put into mortal distress. Until the prince arrives, of course. The moral: women need men to rescue them. Rapunzel at least helps in her own rescue.

The Princess and the Pea? That one's just weird.

The Beauty and the Beast? If you imprison a woman long enough, she'll fall in love with you.

The Frog Prince? Beastiality can make you a princess.

There are, certainly, plenty of fairy takes and fables with good lessons. And at any rate, I'm not remotely the first person to think about this issue. Just look at the Wikipedia page for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

For my money, if I ever have kids, I'm going with The Stinky Cheese Man and this sure-to-be-classic:

Things that make you say Huh?

2011-04-09T02:11:01Z

Here are a few quotes from my last trip:
"Isn't your hotel real nice? It is just down the road from a super market and across the street from Bennigan's so if you want to shop or a taste of home."
WTF I am here for 5 days.

"I'm sorry our gym doesn't provide water. Would you like to purchase something from the vending machine?"

"The taxi meter says7.5 Euro but 7 Euro is fine."
This happened repeatedly.

Best Seat On the Plane

2011-04-06T23:38:45Z

On my recent trip from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt I flew on a Lufthansa 747 and had the pleasure of sitting in the best seat on the plane, seat 56 H. Row 56 seat H you say? That must be towards the back of the plane. Yes, this is true, but walking the length of a 747, not quite a football field, really gets you stretched out for an eight hour flight and when you walk to the very last seat in the back corner, you get plenty of stretching time. As you probably already realize being the very last row also gives you extra time to gather your stuff when you leave, as about 500 people will be getting off before you. Additionally, this seat was conveniently located right next to the bathrooms. This allowed me to just lean over and see right where that lovely aroma was coming from. Of course, as this was a 747, there is a nice gathering area next to the bathrooms, so instead of having to sleep on a 9 hour overnight flight, arriving in at 7:00 am, I had the pleasure of hearing wonderful stories from people standing around me. I am so relieved to hear that grandma is going to keep her toe even though the infection turned it green and took the nail right off and that none of the 106 Peace Corps kids have ever had free booze on a flight before. This helped them utilize the bathroom more, add to the flowery aroma and stand around leaning on my chair more. But the absolute favorite feature of seat 56 H is that it shouldn't even exist in the first place. You see there really isn't enough room for a row in from of the exit doors but Lufthansa had a brilliant idea to take away some of the leg room and put it there. Relaxing has never been so easy; as the seat in front of me lovingly holds my knees no matter which way I happen to sit. So next time you find yourself flying on a Lufthansa 747 make sure you request the best seat on the plane!