mushinnoshin

Just got through loading the freezer after a grocery trip and thought this was sorta funny.

so here we go;

sorry I haven’t written much here lately. I have no greater excuse than simply not having been in the right frame of mind.

Well. Don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m here. And it’s Saturday night, after Christmas. It’s been a decent one. Thursday with the dad, brother, and brother’s family, at Granny’s house, which Dad has now inherited. I think I hit a home run with the Fart Machine I gave my nephew. And another, with a most politically incorrect documentary in which the esteemed civil libertarian boundary-pusher Larry C. Flynt chronicles the accomplishments and exploits of an Alaskan pin-up queen gone rogue. We’ll leave the rest to your imagination or google-fu.

Saturday, pizza, party, and presents with the sister and her husband, which rocked. Never doubt the badassedness of four fresh diced jalapeños and a smattering of mushrooms taking a Digiorno to the next level, especially when you wash it down with a steady flow of a brew-kit bitter and a back supply of the same brew-kit’s dark ale. We backed the food with the Mr. Hankey’s Chrismas Classics dvd, and the beer with Weird Al’s videos dvd, which culminated in the main event of Christmas at Ground Zero. Then to the living room for presents, with Koyaanisqatsi muted, just for the visual, and the TSO playing on on the PC/stereo. Good Times. As far as the gift, my & my sister and I have this long running calendar gag, and I won’t bore you with the details but I think I rocked it this year.

So then today I guess is xmas for me. Cleaned up from the party, then spent the day in lazy, beer-sipping play and exploration. I finally opened up the School of Rock dvd that’s been sitting on my coffee table for months. I can’t tell you how much I love the hell out of that movie. It’s stupid, it’s sappy, but goddamn it it rocks and I love it. Of course I’ve seen it too many hundred thousand times on TBS, so I didn’t need to watch it, but watched it with the commentary from Jack Black and the director, then went back and just watched the “one hell of a rock show” chapter. Man, for a stupid movie song, they nailed it. Just enough Yes, Kiss, Bowie, and Floyd all mixed up and dished out over a plate of AC/DC — fuck yeah. And yes, I fucking cry every time when Turkey Sub struts up to the mike and belts out loud and clear how happy she is to be who she is in a glorious declaration. And though I’ve got my issues with the keyboard kid — I would have liked to have seen a little less Rick Wakeman, a little more Ray Manerik with a helping of Jon Lord (that just would have been more rock and roll to me) — I understand better after the commentary that yeah, Wakeman was probably the perfect archetype given the actor/pianist’s true to life classical upbringing and utter unfamiliarity with rock. And even still I did always like the somewhat-Wakemanesque, but almost more Come Sail Away-era-Denis DeYoung sounding portamento-drenched monotimbral solo he does there. My kinda shit, actually.

Had an awesome dinner (yellow saffron rice, with red onions, fresh jalapeños, and mushrooms, well seasoned and sautéed with a Morningstar Veggie Italian Sausage, if you give a damn), then put on Naqoyqatsi, another dvd I’ve owned for a while but been waiting for the right time to watch. Except that I still haven’t watched it, I’ve just been listening as I typed this post. Well, it *is* Glass, it needs at least one listen by itself without the visual.

And it just ended. Guess I should grab another beer and watch it for real this time.

After stumbling to the computer this morning, as coffee medicated a mild hangover from a kickass shindig the agonyzer hosted with his partners in crime to celebrate their success in a damn fine production of A Christmas Carol — my firefox went batshit and commandeered my morning.

Long story short, over the course of maybe a half to a dozen page loads, the thing just ground to a halt. It wouldn’t respond within the page or in the menus. It acted like took control of X, or at least of KDE, by seeming not to let you switch to a different window, but it was actually just slow, and once switched, you could move between all the *other* windows and terminals with ease. One thing it did leave me was the ability to close the program from the corner ‘X’, and it closed quickly and cleanly. I’d relaunch — no alerts, it was a clean close and didn’t believe itself to have crashed — and as the tabs from the previous session opened, it crawled to the same condition.

Repeat several times, closing out all but the standard dozen or so tabs I keep open 24-7, which I know aren’t likely to have any out of control scripting — no change. No change in safe mode, or after using safe mode launch to restore some program defaults. Try an apt-get upgrade (think “Windows Update”) on the system (running debian testing on a pretty old amd xp-1700), and a dist-upgrade (think “Windows Service Pack”). These installed a new enough firefox that I had to upgrade some plugins. Finally an install –reinstall on firefox, err, iceweasel. Rebooted after each of the last three. All without making a lick of difference.

Exasperated, I closed all the aforementioned always-open tabs, restarted one last time — and everything worked like a champ. Of course I immediately reopened all the same standard tabs, without a hitch.

So it doesn’t seem to have been the pages, but something with the browser’s cache of information about and controlling one or more of the tabs and their content.

As far as the awesomeness goes — well it *was* pretty impressive how consistently firefox reproduced my session tabs, through all those ups and downs and upgrades and even the reinstall. Even if it did suck that it had to reproduce whatever the hell was wrong in the process.

Sean Braisted pointed us to this casual election survey by Domino’s Pizza. Of course it’s fun that Obama won, but here’s what I found interesting:

In general, Republicans:
# Spend more per order than other customers
# Rely on credit cards more than other customers

While Democrats:
# Pay cash for their food

John Stewart last night made a great joke in reference to the shots of the amber waves of grain in the Obama infomercial, to paraphrase — “Finally, a candidate you want to make a beer with!”

And now the Beer Activist tells us about … wait for it… The Audacity of Hops –

’08% ABV and full of WIN.

McCain’s Economic Plan

This should be fun!

I just received some belated birthday money, and since most of my stimulus check got sucked up in medical expenses, I was determined to get something I wanted with this nice little bonus. So the Coopers Micro Brew Kit which I’ve had my eye on for a while is now en route. I can’t wait!

• This song has come up in conversation a couple times in the past week or so, and it’s one of my all time favorites, so I thought I’d point a link. Plus I’ve seen a few people do something about “Feel Good Fridays”, but I figure the closest I can get is “Feel Dark, Reflective, Mysterious, and Just Short of Morbid Saturdays”. Peter Gabriel – Games Without Fronteirs
• It’s a little after 10:00 and I’m not in jail. Well, that’s an improvement over some Saturdays.
• I caught part of 13 Going On 30 on the tube tonight. It’s not an extraordinary film, but it’s cute and sweet. It’s one of the endless list of films whose premise is essentially that being a shallow, ruthless, shithead megalomaniac with cutthroat ambition may lead to wealth, power, and glamorous sex — but your life will be ugly, meaningless, and empty. Thing I’ve found though is that being a deep, thoughtful and caring person without a trace of shallow ambition *ALSO* leaves your life ugly, meaningless, and empty — but without the benefits of wealth, power, and glamorous sex. So I guess I’m asking if anyone can teach me how to be a ruthless shithead megalomaniac.
• Sigh. I know. It’s not like I’m one of the poor kids in Chop Shop. Those kids have actual problems. Fantastic flick, by the way.
• Last night the NSO introduced me to the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique wherein a composer in love with a woman he can’t have writes a psychedelic symphony about a young musician in love with a woman he can’t have, who tries to kill his pain and himself with opium, falling into a hallucinogenic trance of highly dramatic visions. And to think, some people don’t believe in reincarnation.

Well, I lack opium, but another shot of vodka might do me some good.

After enjoying the Flatrock Festival this Saturday, you can come back next week for the Música de le Gente / Music of the People Festival:

A festive and FREE celebration of Mexican-American music will be presented by American Roots Music Education and Metro Parks and Recreation on Saturday, May 31, 2008 at the newly renovated Coleman Park Community Center.

Throughout the afternoon there will be lots of live music from local bands, including Ocho Treinta, Son Latino and Danny Salazar y Trova Urbana. At 5:00 pm the internationally renowned group from San Antonio, Texas, Los Texmaniacs, will perform.

Children can participate in crafts such as making paper flowers, cowboy hats, embossed tin boxes, lizard keychains and rhythm instruments. A children’s folklorico group will perform at 3:30 and there will be lots of piñatas, an exhibit of visual art by Latino artists, and plenty of dancing. Food and drink will be available for sale from local vendors.

FREE and open to the public

Date: Saturday, May 31, 2008
Time: 12:00 – 6:30 PM
Location: Coleman Park Community Center
(corner of Nolensville Road and Thompson Lane),
Nashville, TN
Good weather — outside!
Not-so-good weather — in the gym!

via Hispanic Nashville

I’ve been meaning to post about this, so before I forget again —

This Saturday, May 24, 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM at Coleman Park is the Hands Together In Flatrock Music And Arts Festival. From the presser:

In an effort to encourage interaction, greater understanding and tolerance among the older residents and the new immigrant families of Flatrock, members of the Flatrock community have come together to present a one day, family oriented festival. The Hands Together in Flatrock 1st Annual Music and Arts Festival will feature a unique mix of music, arts and cuisine – all of which have been selected with the intent to represent the rich, cultural diversity of the Flatrock community.

(read the full details here)

Should be a good time. Following is a tentative performance schedule that just came across the listserv:

11:00- 11:25    Gospel Choir
11:40-12:05     NSA Bluegrass Band
12:15-1:00      Boomerrang
1:10-1:40       Kurdish Singers/Hussein
1:50-2:20       Austin Cunningham
2:30-3:20       Baba Musa and Nature's Drummer
3:30-4:45       Irene Kelley/Tommy Womack
5:00-5:50       Trova Urbana w/ Danny Salazar
6:00-6:50       Orchid Skye

Also, our most famous Flatrock resident Brenda Lee will serve as Grand Marshall, though she won’t be performing.

You can preview some of the artists on the festival MySpace page.

View Larger Map

PS: In case anyone just falls in love with the neighborhood and just happens to be looking for a house (ahem), there are some good ones… ya know, just sayin’…