A Bowl of Stupid

Un-fucking-believable. I'm just getting over a 3 day bout with the stomach flu, and this afternoon I find that I'm coming down with a head cold. What the fuck? I don't remember making fun of the cold weather up north THAT much. Karma's a bitch, but c'mon dude.

Anyhoo, I'm listening to this particular album right now, and coincidentally I had told a buddy of mine a while ago that I was going to post a video excerpt from this episode of MTV Unplugged - probably the last show I've ever watched on MTV, actually.

There's so much that can be said about this song, this TV show, and this band - both on a personal level and with respect to the music itself - that saying too much would probably throw a bigger shadow on both the music and my memories then what is justly deserved (and it could just possibly cause my toes to start randomly falling off or something, the way the week has been going).

For now, I'll note only the obvious. Nirvana is generally considered to be one of the most influential rock bands of the past 20 years, and a defining musical phenomenon distinguishing grunge and other forms of alt-rock music from the hair bands and bubble-gum pop music that dominated the music scene during the late 80's and early 90's.

Nirvana, and to a lesser extent, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and others, surfaced during a time in my life, and in the life of music, greatly in need of focus. Initially, I didn't give Nirvana much thought considering the trash the recording industry had been throwing at the general public during the years immediately precedent.

Nirvana recorded this episode of "MTV Unplugged" in November 1993.

It was only after I watched this particular show that I, as well as many others, came to see Nirvana as more than simply just another bunch of disgruntled wannabe rock stars. And for me, it triggered a greater desire to soak up as much of their music as I possibly could before they broke-up or otherwise disappeared from the scene, not knowing just how appropriate was my thinking at the time.

Cobain killed himself just 6 months later, in April of 1994.

Ironically, I understand that during post-production, Cobain watched the unedited tape of the show and asked the director to include more images of him smiling since he didn't want the audience to think he was that depressed.

Nirvana - All Apologies Unplugged
Due to YouTube's brilliant new copyright policy, All Apologies has been removed from the site. I'm replacing it with another of my favorites from their Unplugged show - Polly (until they get around to removing that video too).

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As reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she served as an editor, Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down battle with breast cancer she had waged for seven years. She was 62.

She will be missed.

Thanks to Kang for bringing that story to my attention.

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I'm feeling a bit better, but still pretty weak (err, … make that weaker than usual). For that reason, although I'm gonna post a music clip, I'm gonna let Wikipedia do most of the explaining for the uninitiated. To wit:

Guster is an alternative rock band (sometimes classified as jangle pop), originally formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1991 by members Ryan Miller, Adam Gardner, and Brian Rosenworcel. Joe Pisapia has since joined.

Guster is often recognized for their choice of instruments during their earlier years: two members playing acoustic guitars and one member playing drums and various percussion. Rosenworcel added to Guster's unique sound with a combination of bongos, cymbals, and other drums, playing live shows using only his bare hands. Gardner would sometimes play a downtuned guitar as a bass instrument. Guster's sound is also defined by their vocal harmonies, with both Miller and Gardner singing lead vocals on different songs; in songs such as "What You Wish For" and "Happier," the two members sing different lyrics simultaneously.

Guster released their fifth full length studio album, "Ganging Up on the Sun," in June, 2006. This is their first single from that album, "One Man Wrecking Machine." It's a great song from a great band, and a really cool video.

Guster - One Man Wrecking Machine

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Once again, this is about a week old, but I just saw it today and felt the need to post this clip of Jon Stewart and the other writers at The Daily Show taking on President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address. Every time you think the routine reaches its pinnacle, it gets a little better. God, I wish I was this clever.

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I find it ironic that I've received a whole bunch of feedback — including from my neighbor telling me that she and her boyfriend "were cracking up" — about yesterday's post discussing how miserable I felt. Indeed, I hesitated posting about my illness in the first place because I was afraid of getting heckled by TK and Chez in response to my commentary about how nice the weather currently is down in Miami as opposed to Boston and NYC, respectively.

In contrast, not one person has commented on, or even inquired as to the somewhat more coherent posts I did from the other day quoting from Jorge Luis Borges' "Collected Fictions," and describing a drug-resistant bacteria infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq.

Okay, I get it, I get it - "dance, monkey, dance!"

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This video from the Republican National Convention is obviously a few years old, but it's still both funny and disconcerting. Even now that Bush's approval rating hovers at an anemic 29%-30%, I doubt the current GOP will stop with this rhetoric for years to come.

And I also doubt I'd have seen it but for the Shark having posted it on his site. Thanks kid.

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I feel like complete and utter crap. I would never have even posted anything but for the fact that I'm getting dangerously close to sinking forever into my couch, which is where I've spent the last — no joke — 20 hours (when not otherwise in the bathroom vomiting).

Not that it matters to anyone, but I'm also listing the movies I've watched/slept through during those 20 hours (just so I'll know for future reference, because I doubt/hope I won't remember anything from today):

Patton;

Fight Club;

Snatch;

Constantine;

Serenity (twice);

The Hulk;

Big Trouble In Little China;

Romancing the Stone (don't ask);

Tron; and

The Boondock Saints.

Yeah, I'm guessing this is payback for gloating about the nice weather we've been having down here. Blah.

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This is an interesting story. However, I also want to preface the story with this comment:

I've been a reader of Daily Kos for years. I like and respect many of the progressive commentators who were pointing out the numerous fallacies and failings of the current administration back when doing so could earn you a trip to Guantanamo for being a subversive islamo-fascist radical. That being said, I also beleive that much of the verbiage used, and allowed, on the Daily Kos forums are far more incendiary than necessary. In this regard, I am much more like Martin Luther King than Malcolm X with respect to my views on large-scale morality and political dispute resolution.

Okay, preface completed.

Daily Kos recently addressed an issue of which I've been peripherally aware for several years - the issue of public treatment of Vietnam-era veterans. In a story about Chuck Hagel and John McCain's friendship and differing views on Iraq, Newsweek assets as fact that many Vietnam-era returning GIs were sometimes jeered and even spat upon in airports.

There's a small problem with that. Despite the widespread belief these days that troops returning from Vietnam were spat on, there's no empirical data to support the assertion. In his book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, the sociologist Jerry Lembcke looked for evidence of episodes of spitting, and as he wrote in a 2005 Boston Globe op-ed:

STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.

What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us."

Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.

Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming.

I've heard similar accounts on how vets were viewed with much of the same respect in the States we now provide returning Iraqi veterans. I was only a child at the time, but I've heard there were generally no hard feelings, and the guys were viewed as reluctant volunteers. As we all know, however, that sharply contrasts the general view that has been propagated by the media and in movies. The media always has had a flair for the dramatic.

Now Kos posts this story, itself somewhat incendiary, about how the mainstream media, this time by and through Newsweek, continues to "Perpetuate A Lie." Yes, there is obviously truth to the fact that Newsweek is engaging in some shaky journalism by relying on unsupported facts. However, I'm not sure I fully agree with how the story is reported, and how the argument is made, by Kos (through a forum commentator, "MissLaura").

The use of such incendiary criticism concerning Newsweek — who rightly should be faulted — takes away both the credibility and force of the underlying story; one which bears noting since it may be of some import on how the public chooses to allow the Bush Administration and the media to treat the current batch of veterans — as pawns or as people.

Semper Fi.

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As I've mentioned ad nauseam, last night was the screening of Sipping Jetstreams, which was presented as part of a Charity Event by the local South Florida Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

Not only was it a really nice night which raised some desperately needed money for the guys over at Surfrider, I won a $25.00 gift certificate donated by South Beach Divers, the only full service dive shop located on Miami Beach. Sweet.

Anyway, I had not seen the movie before, and I was absolutely blown away. It's not a long film, which is actually a good thing for surf flicks (other than "Riding Giants", of course) since many tend to get boring with the same guys pulling the same moves over and over for 2 hours. However, this film (and accompanying book) by Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey is anything but the norm.

From the markets and souks of Marrakech in Morocco to the blues of the Atlantic in Barbados, from Japan to Cuba, Italy, Hong Kong, and Egypt, Sipping Jetstreams is a photographic journey of discovery and adventure. This two-year odyssey focuses not just on the surfing but the places and the faces of each destination.

Here's the teaser trailer for the film.

Sipping Jetstreams

Yes, they got great footage of some beautiful people whom otherwise would never would have gained international exposure, and some incredible footage from places not generally considered to be surfing hot-spots. Moreover, it's got a much more diverse soundtrack than most other surfing movies out there, including songs from Massive Attack, Years Around the Sun, and the Buena Vista Social Club.

This leads me to my second video in this post - the inevitable music video clip. I'm not letting this devolve into a discussion about Cuba. Needless to say it's a "big ticket item" down here in Miami. I try not to get involved since it has very little to do with me. However, one of the inadvertent benefits of the Cuban influence down here is that I dated a Cubana girlfriend who introduced me to the "Buena Vista Social Club" several years ago.

If you've never heard their sound, I've been told it's uniquely Cuban. And it is a bit unlike anything else I've heard, from other Latin countries or elsewhere. The sound is amazing (wait for the trumpet), and the video is beautiful and touching. Take a listen.

Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan

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From the half-light of dawn to the half-light of evening, the eyes of a leopard, in the last years of the twelfth century, looked upon a few wooden boards, some vertical iron bars, some varying men and women, a blank wall, and perhaps a stone gutter littered with dry leaves. The leopard did not know, could not know, that it yearned for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing flesh and a breeze with the scent of deer, but something inside it was suffocating and howling in rebellion, and God spoke to it in a dream: You shall live and die in this prison, so that a man that I have knowledge of may see you a certain number of times and never forget you and put your figure and your symbol into a poem, which has its exact place in the weft of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you shall have given a word to the poem. In the dream, God illuminated the animal's rude understanding and the animal grasped the reasons and accepted its fate, but when it awoke there was only an obscure resignation in it, a powerful ignorance, because the machine of the world is exceedingly complex for the simplicity of a savage beast.

Years later, Dante was to die in Ravenna, as unjustified and alone as any other man. In a dream, God told him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, astonished, learned at last who he was and what he was, and he blessed the bitternesses of his life. Legend has it that when he awoke, he sensed that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something he would never be able to recover, or even to descry from afar, because the machine of the world is exceedingly complex for the simplicity of men.

Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

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I saw this video Marc posted over at Uniquely The Epitome, describing how the Earth has been overrun by a bunch of monkeys. I liked it so much that I'm "borrowing" it from him (just like Tim Burton allegedly "borrowed" Kevin Smith's idea for "The Planets of the Apes").

Money (or mon-key) quote from video:

"See, the monkeys feel alone. All 6 Billion of them.

Some of the monkeys pay another monkey to listen to their problems.

The monkeys want answers. The monkeys know they're going to die, so the monkeys make up gods and then they worship them.

Then the monkeys start to argue over whose made-up god is better.

Then the monkeys get really pissed off, and this is usually when the monkeys decide that it's a good time to start killing each other."

If you don't catch it the first time, check out the fleeting reference to "The Flying Spaghetti Monster" as a nice little backside "Ba Fangul" to established religion.

P.S. Monkey? MONKEY? I'm a fucking gorilla, you clown!

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Okay, for some reason or another, going surfing in Miami in the middle of January has reminded me of … country music, of course.

I was never too keen about most of the country music scene when I was younger. However, about a decade ago (if not more), I realized that a lot of country music actually sounded an awful lot like some of pop and rock music I had been listening to. I checked my album collection again, and I figured that if country music was okay for the likes of Lynard Skynard, The Allman Brothers, and Molly Hatchet - all of whom I idolize - it may work for some other musicians (if they have the talent).

For this reason, every so often, I'll pop on Country Music Television (CMT) to see what's up. Nine times out of ten, all I hear is George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, or Sawyer Brown (*shudder*). But every so often I hear something I like a lot. Such was the case when I flipped on CMT about this time last year, when I first saw the video below - "Kerosene" by Miranda Lambert.

I like it for three (3) reasons mainly. First, because it's a catchy tune and Lambert's voice, although still a bit unseasoned (she was only 21 when she recorded "Kerosene" in early 2005), shows promise of strength that could eventually make her a huge country music presence. Second, Lambert is a throw-back to the singer/songwriters of the 1970's, having written (or co-written) 11 of the 12 tracks on her first album.

And third, because she's really cute and she's got a nice badonkadonk.

She claims Tammy Wynette is a major musical influence, and you can tell Lambert has studied her well. Now a year's gone by, Kerosene has since been certified Gold for digital sales. Lambert was nominated for the CMA's "Horizon Award" in 2005, as well as the "Best New Female Artist" and for "Best Video" awards by the Academy of Country Music in 2006. She's also been nominated 2007 Grammy award for the "Best Female Country Vocal Performance" for Kerosene.

Take a listen to her and see if you think she's worth all the fuss. Did I mention she's really cute?

Miranda Lambert - Kerosene

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I'm playing hooky today. A nice cool weather system blew through the Miami area yesterday and left with it some nice waist to chest-high sets. The air temperature cooled down into the 60's overnight and right now, as of 9:15 or so, the air temp is still only about 60-65 degrees (F). But the water temperature is hovering at about 70 degrees, so it shouldn't be too bad out there with a spring suit (shorty) on.

As an aside, for anybody down here in the Miami Beach area, if you take a look over at the Miami-Dade County Surf Forecast, you'll see that the Surfrider Foundation, South Florida Chapter, has added a second show for tonight's public screening at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, of the amazing surf film "Sipping Jetstreams: An Adventure in Life" by Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey:

From the markets and souks of Marrakech in Morocco to the blues of the Atlantic in Barbados, from Japan to Cuba, Italy, Hong Kong, and Egypt, Sipping Jetstreams is a photographic journey of discovery and adventure. This two-year odyssey focuses not just on the surfing but the places and the faces of each destination.

Food and beverages will be sold at the event. All funds raised during the evening will be used by the Surfrider Foundation South Florida Chapter to run effectively its campaigns (getting beach access re-opened at Haulover, funding water testing at the Key Biscayne Nature Center, creating teaching materials so kids can learn about Florida's watershed, among others). Help Surfrider accomplish its mission in protecting oceans, waves and beaches. Come and see a surf flick!

I'm going to be at both showings the 10:00 p.m. showing, and if anyone else wants to show up - the more the merrier. The plan is for a bunch of us to go out for a couple beers afterwards, as well.

UPDATE:

The surf this morning was simply outstanding. The air temp quickly warmed from 60 to 75 degrees (F), with the water temp about the same. When I first got out, there was a nice offshore breeze coming from the west, and the water was glassy with a nice ground swell putting together some nice chest high sets. It reminded me of California conditions more than Miami.

And then the tide changed. And the wind changed. And the kooks came out of the woodwork. And the last hour of my session was a bit of a nightmare. You ever see slalom skiers? It's about the same concept, only in this case, you're trying to get around a bunch of mooks sitting inside the surf break right where you want to go. Well, it's still a beautiful day, I had some good clean waves for a while, and I'm really in no place to complain when I heard on the radio on the way home that the temperature is in the single digits up in Philly, Boston and New York City.

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I received favorable responses from several friends with respect to the "unauthorized" video I posted yesterday for Tool's latest release, The Pot. Hell, I've personally found myself watching the video over and over again today. It's a great tune. And just now, Marc Rapp over at Uniquely the Epitome posted a follow-up with another great unauthorized video from that same director.

Marc's post got me thinking about the first video I had ever seen for one of Tool's songs, their classic "Sober." That song is the epitome of Tool's underlying aesthetic and sound. It also gives you a glimpse at how the vocals of lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, have evolved and strengthened since Sober was first released in 1994. It is also one of the creepiest, disturbing, and utterly brilliant music videos I've ever seen.

So, I apologize if this is turning into "Tool Week" over here at The Bowl, but restating what I've said in the past - it's my damn blog and I can do whatever the fuck I please. That's not to say anyone will ever read it again if this keeps up, but that's for another day. Okay, watch this video, preferably on some sort of powerful hallucinogen.

Tool - Sober

P.S. Yes Kang, I said "Tool" again. He-he, uh, he-he.

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The band "Tool" has been a favorite of mine for years (as is "A Perfect Circle," another band in which the lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, is a member). If you're not familiar with Tool, think Marilyn Manson meets Rage Against the Machine (who, coincidentally, may be regrouping later this year), with a pinch of Pink Floyd thrown into the mix.

As for their background and influences, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Tool is an American progressive rock band, formed in 1990 in Los Angeles, California. Their overall sound has been described as "grinding, post-Jane's Addiction heavy metal" as well as "a primal sound as distinct as it is disturbing" — most simplified categorizations of the band's genre are often dismissed. They are known for addressing philosophical and spiritual issues in their lyrics, such as evolution and Jungian psychology, organized religion and transcendence, as well as for songs that feature "complex rhythm changes, haunting vocals, and an onslaught of changes in dynamics" which often result in a greater-than-average track length.

Yeah, what they said.

This song, The Pot, is the second release off of their latest album, 10,000 Days. The song is an amazing showcase for Keenan's vocal talents, as well as the bass playing of Justin Chancellor - both of which you'll hear at the song's outset.

Although an accompanying video has not yet been released by the studio, according to "The Rock Radio" a video was shot last month over the winter holidays. Notwithstanding, there has been an unauthorized video produced that is itself pretty good and captures the moral and religious overtones contained in the lyrics, as well as the overall "trippiness" existent in Tool's other videos. Check it out.

Tool - The Pot

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I'm planning a snowboarding trip to Park City in the coming weeks. Hopefully, I can get out of Miami when the superbowl is going on - a bunch of mid-westerners in Miami in February? Geez, talk about your culture shock. And they're gonna be selling suntan lotion by the gallon. This whole town is gonna smell like a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic (if we're lucky).

Anyway, I came across something which reminded me of my trip (and the fact I've still got to buy plane tickets). It's a video of someone taking just an absolutely sick line going down this ridge-line. Did he make it? Errr, … not so much.

(nod to imnotadoctor.com)

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I mentioned to one of my friends that I'm maintaining this blog. Now, apparently he's got nothing better to do than to read it on a regular basis. So for him, I'm posting a bunch of random links I found from all around the "internets." This should keep him busy for about 10 minutes. After that, kid, you're on your own.

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Last weekend, a gent by the name of Darren Barefoot launched a website entitled Get a First Life. Much of the content, like another of my favorite websites, is sublime comic genius.

In it, Barefoot declares:

America's teens, your First Life dream world awaits. Hang out at the mall! Embarrass yourself in gym class! Get acne! Experiment with mind-altering recreational drugs! The First Life world is your oyster.

Got First Life Questions? We've Got Answers!

– Are five senses enough?

– What's this body thing, and what do I do with the dangly bits?

– Why can't I build a dirigible with my mind?

Personally, I think that is the best use of the term "dangly bits" to have ever appeared online. And dirigibles?? Brilliantly random.

"Get a First Life" essentially ridicules the many persons (like myself of late, ironically) who waste away their lives in the virtual world of the internet, rather than the real world existing still outside their dank cave-like apartments. In so doing, it relies heavily upon, and parodies, Second Life, an extremely popular "3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents[, and] inhabited by a total of 2,867,113 people from around the globe."

Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, could have easily served Barefoot with the ever-popular "cease-and-desist letter" that we all know and love. Indeed, apparently expecting such a draconian response, Barefoot (I refuse to beleive that's his real name) even set up a link specifically to handle any incoming C&D letters. However, Ginsu Yoon, the general counsel for Linden Labs responded with a letter so clever, in and of itself, that it would horrify the overreaching copyright and trademark holders whose missives litter the archives of ChillingEffects.org.

Instead of sending a cease-and-desist letter, Yoon sent a "proceed-and-permit" letter — another work of sublime genius.

First, Yoon addresses the assumption that Linden Labs would act like many of its contemporaries by sending Barefoot an ill-advised cease-and-desist letter, writing:

Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.

In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected.

I love it! Although he could have written to Barefoot simply acknowledging the various IP issues at stake, Yoon uses standard legal jargon to counter-parody Barefoot's humor.

This letter is exactly how companies should respond when faced with obviously allowed uses of their intellectual property rights. Linden Labs doesn't waste time with any non-issues; instead, it expressly acknowledges that the "First Life" site is a parody site and, therefore, most likely a “fair use” of its copyrighted materials under applicable terms of the Copyright Act and/or the Lanham Act.

What is also refreshing is how Yoon also expressly acknowledges something that many lawyers advocating their client's position do not — that "determining whether or not a particular use constitutes fair use … is often highly complex and frustratingly indeterminate[.]" Indeed, the only winners in most of these situations are the outside counsel billing hundreds of dollars an hour while pushing their clients to pursue questionable claims.

Finally, Yoon also grants an express limited use license on behalf of Linden Labs allowing Barefoot to use the Second Life trademarked "modified eye-in-hand logo" — in my opinion, an absolute masterstroke. The goodwill accomplished by allowing such limited use far outweighs any potential damage. From a corporate point of view, you've just obtained free advertising. And now you can regulate it.

God, how I wish I could have ever, EVER had a client with sufficient business acumen and good sense to understand that more good would be accomplished by allowing, and even sanctioning, such actions than would ever be accomplished by attempting to strong arm the alleged perpetrator into submission.

(Nod to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and High Priestess Kang)

UPDATE: After thinking about this for a few minutes, and after re-reading the last paragraph in this post, I actually submitted a resume to Linden Labs to work with Yoon. I doubt I'll hear back from them, but damn it would be nice to work with sensible people again.

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As I wrote about yesterday, I just received an email from an old friend I haven't heard from for about 5-6 years. It was nice to hear from her, and it brought back some nice memories I had otherwise forgotten. Although I'm a bit older that she, she was still able to introduce me to a wide variety of music I doubt I would have otherwise heard.

In this regard, the first artist who jumps into my head is Ani Difranco. I had never heard of DiFranco before, but my friend was a big admirer of her music and I too soon grew to love the rhythmic poetry of Difranco's music. She's got a unique staccato guitar style, utilizing rapid finger-picking and alternate guitar tunings, and she's got a devout cult following (DiFranco is seen by many as a feminist and lesbian icon, although she is admittedly bi-sexual and she is expecting her first child soon - if she hasn't already given birth).

This song in particular, which she performed live on Sessions at West 54th a few years back, is one of my favorites. It is also probably one of her few "commercial" successes, having been remade by Alana Davis in the mid-1990's. Take a listen.

Ani Difranco - 32 Flavors

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Okay, while looking for a picture from the movie "The 10 Commandments" to accompany the immediately preceding post about a drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq, I came across what has got to be one of the funniest "remixed movie trailer" I've ever seen. The actor they chose to cast as "The Burning Bush" is absolutely sublime.

Ahh, Moses, Moses …

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Raw Story:

A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq — and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe — accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq, Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.

The several thousand word expose is set to bring uncomfortable new light to the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii that Pentagon officials previously said was likely a product of Iraqi soil.

"By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world," the magazine reveals.

Wired

Since OPERATION Iraqi Freedom began in 2003, more than 700 US soldiers have been infected or colonized with Acinetobacter baumannii. A significant number of additional cases have been found in the Canadian and British armed forces, and among wounded Iraqi civilians.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has recorded seven deaths caused by the bacteria in US hospitals along the evacuation chain. Four were unlucky civilians who picked up the bug at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, while undergoing treatment for other life-threatening conditions. Another was a 63-year-old woman, also chronically ill, who shared a ward at Landstuhl with infected coalition troops.

Crooks and Liars

The spread of a pathogen that targets wounded GIs has triggered broad reforms in both combat medical care and the Pentagon's networks for tracking bacterial threats within the ranks. Interviews with current and former military physicians, recent articles in medical journals, and internal reports reveal that the Department of Defense has been waging a secret war within the larger mission in Iraq and Afghanistan - a war against antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

I'm not kidding, if I read any story in the news next week even mentioning the words "fire," "frogs" or "locust" in the same sentence as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - I'm heading on the first flight to Tahiti and burying my head in the surf.

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Due to an Aristotelian confluence of events, I've recently been made aware of, and subsequently concerned about, just how much personal information I, or anyone, should "actively" provide over the internet.

Having practiced law for a decade, I'm used to having to divulge certain personal information to the general public. Indeed, I've never really given it much of a second thought; if you want a license to practice law, your potential clients are legally entitled to know as much about your background as possible for them to get a "warm and fuzzy" about hiring you. No problem, it's one of the necessities associated with doing business as a licensed lawyer.

This brings into sharp relief the difference between various internet businesses (which are potentially global in nature) and the practice of law (which is essentially a local activity regulated mostly on a State level).

Although I have been working indirectly in the technology field for close to 15 years, I am relatively new to the medium on a personal level. I started this blog towards the middle of last year (much of which was accidentally deleted), and I have also launched several "e-commerce" websites in the interim. Given the obvious need to generate "traffic" to those new sites, I understood the need to publicize them as much as possible, both organically and via more traditional means of paid advertising.

Those projects have not generated the revenue I had originally intended and hoped for. I now see greater potential in capitalizing on my legal prowess and, as such, I am now pursuing work as a legal management consultant and/or in-house legal counsel. In so doing, as with any marketing campaign, I am essentially required to advertise a new product — in this case, me. This poses a unique problem given the underlying nature of the internet.

Just how much information is too much information?

Admittedly, I had not given the issue much thought before today. As noted above, I'm already familiar with maintaining a relatively public profile. Further, people with much higher public profiles than I have widely publicized their own personal information, and they don't seem to be terribly concerned. Moreover, being physically fit and well trained, I thought no need to insert any level of insulation between my personal and public self (as it were).

I still beleive this to some extent. However, several matters came up today which have prompted me to re-think my position.

First, I learned today that some of my female friends have been receiving harassing emails and commentary from a number of online "trolls." These are really very nice people who do not deserve to be subject to such conduct. Regardless, as females, they were apparently smart enough to implement at least some precautions just in case something like this ever happened. Due to my infallible "Y" chromosome, however, I never considered that someone would attempt to "troll" my sites for the sole purpose of harassing your Faithful Narrator. In retrospect, I've been extremely naive or extremely lazy - either one being entirely possible. To date, I luckily have not yet been subject to such behavior, but that could always change.

Also today, I was contacted by an old friend living across the country from whom I had not heard in over 6 years. In this particular case, the contact was extremely welcome. I had long been wondering about her and was very pleased to hear how well she is doing. However, it also raised the privacy issue again - only hours after learning about the problems mentioned in the immediately preceding paragraph. In this case, it wasn't so much that my friend found my personal address or phone number (which she did not), but it brought into sharp relief the ease with which one could potentially obtain such information it they so desired.

Finally, I have also been talking with Dennis Smith over at www.WirelessJobs.com, who has very generously offered to publicize my profile on his website, which is frequented by a variety of recruiters in the tech field. I had initially provided Dennis my Resume several days ago in order to assist him with his kind offer. This morning, however, he asked me if I wouldn't feel better redacting my personal contact information from the document, since he plans on posting it on his site. Once again, it was not the concept that floored me, but more the way he asked the question. It made me think that I had been very naive in assuming it would be safe for me to provide such private information in an online public forum.

After thinking about it, I realized that Dennis is absolutely correct. Despite the fact that I'm marketing myself, I probably should not be so amenable to publicizing everything about myself.

Which leads again to my underlying questions — just how much is too much? Where does one draw the line?

I'm not sure I have a proper answer to either of these questions.

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I've been in various states of disrepair for the past couple days, so I'm not really up for any serious posting. I had a good weekend, but it was long and taxing (I spent time with my 6 year old niece - 'nuff said). I hope to write something substantial in the next day or two; but for now I'm limiting it to a quick note on a music video.

This is one of those great songs I grew up listening to in my teens, but I had otherwise forgotten about for years, until I first watched the brilliant move "Layer Cake" when it came out in 2005, and when I just watched the movie again the other day.

For anyone that doesn't remember, "The Cult" was one of England's leading heavy metal revivalists of the mid-1980's. They were an interesting mix of the hard rock aesthetics of "hair band metal" and the psychedelic flourishes of the "neo-hippie" movements of the time. The result was something akin to The Doors mixed together with The Smiths, Led Zeppelin, Prince, and Def Leppard. This song is a great example of that sound.

The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary

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Ey, me brother?

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If you've never heard of either Charlie Parker or Dizzie Gillespie, then I would suggest you go back to listening to Nickelback and forget you'd ever heard those names.

If you have heard of them, you may not know much about their music, their backgrounds, or how they used "bebop" to usher jazz from the classic "big band" aesthetics of the 40's into the "modern jazz" standards everyone is familiar with today. That's okay, I guess, but you should listen to at least a sampling of their talents, and learn about the impact they had on contemporary jazz. Here's some background:

A saxophonist and composer, Charles "The Bird" Parker, is commonly considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, alongside Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. As aptly noted by Jazz critic Scott Yanow, "Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time." A founding father of bebop, Parker's innovative approach to melody, rhythm and harmony was enormously influential on his contemporaries, and remains an inspiration for musicians still. Parker's harmonic ideas were revolutionary, introducing a new tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. If you listen with a critical ear (which is how my father taught me to listen to his work) you can also tell just how clean and penetrating the tone is for each of his notes, no matter how rapid or passingly played.

Dizzy Gillespie was also a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the styles of Roy Eldridge and other greats but also adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unused in jazz. In addition to his instrumental skills, Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed glasses, his scat singing, puffed cheeks, and light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop, which was originally regarded as threatening music by many listeners. In essence, Dizzy made bebop "safe for the white audiences." He had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians.

Listen and learn. Or if you'd prefer not to, no worries, I hear "Creed" is back in the studio remaking their last album.

Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie - Hot House

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Sorry for doing this, but I just came across something that compels me to reference the piece I wrote just recently about my love of surfing and some of the gods in the sport.

The second video accompanying that post includes the most amazing thing I've ever seen — Laird Hamilton surfing what is widely recognized as the biggest, thickest wave in the world at Teahupoo (Choe-poo), Tahiti. That wave is a freak of hydrodynamics, drawing literally hundreds of tons of water off of a reef located just several feet below where the wave breaks.

That video takes place in real time. As such, although you can get some idea of scale by looking at how the wave absolutely dwarfs the 6′2″ (189 cm) tall Hamilton, it's still difficult to understand the power of Hamilton's achievement. This still picture taken by Tim McKenna (who is also responsible for the photo in my blog's header) is somewhat more compelling.

When Greg Noll, the father of modern big-wave surfing, first saw this picture of Hamilton gliding under hundreds of tons of water, he responded: "Aww, that's shit's impossible." Yup.

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Congenital amusia: (def.)

[n] 1. Medical condition whereby all musical songs sound the same. Recent evidence from individuals born with a profound musical impairment suggests that the ability to process pitch information is normally present from birth. This finding supports the idea that the perception and appreciation of music, both of which critically depend on pitch processing, have a biological basis in the brain.

[n] 2. Nickelback. U.S. rock band who's musical songs all sound the same. Listen to prime example here.

Hat tip to TK at Uncooked Meat.

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I just realized that I've neglected to post anything today, but for the record I've been out and about trying to get a feel for the job market. As I'm not beholden to any one place anymore, it's a bit more complicated than the last time I was in this position. Then, I knew I was going to stay in the ol' MIA, so my options were reduced. Now, not so much.

I've discussed ad nauseum how much I dig the music and general aesthetics of the band "Zero 7″ (they're not so much a band, but a a couple of DJ's with a group of independent supporting vocalists and musicians).

Thievery Corporation is another "band" from this same mold, being a DC based "DJ duo" - Rob Garza and Eric Hilton - together with various supporting artists. Like Zero 7, they also can be characterized as downtempo electronica. However, these guys are much more influenced by acid jazz, Indian classical and Brazilian works, fused together with the same underlying lounge aesthetic. The result is a trippy mix of bossa nova played with sitars and a down back-beat.

This particular clip is a few years old, but it's still used by megalomaniacal movie directors (redundant?) the world over when attempting to convey a "loungey" setting in their movies. It also happens to be one of my favorites off of their CD "The Mirror Conspiracy."

Thievery Corporation - Shadows Of Ourselves

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