sunday in brief...

Jennifer and Katie went out this afternoon to catch a community theatre production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods. I took Ian to Target, bought myself a white linen button-down shirt, and pulled a muscle in my back picking up a 35 pound bucket of Tidy Cat.

That is all.


  (posted by Dave at 6:31 PM || )

  separation anxiety...

So I was sitting in the basement this evening, reading... listening to music, when I decided to take care of something I’ve been meaning to do – get on to eBay and sell some stuff. Particularly some guitars. Because really... I can NOT move all of these things to the new house. There simply won’t be room for them. And I never play them, and they are all old stuff I bought from pawn shops for $100, and now that I have a nice solid Stratocaster, what do I need a bunch of old beat up Silvertone’s and Harmony’s for?

So I log on to eBay, open a new listing, start typing the description for my Harmony archtop, and I’m about 5 lines into it and I forget if the pickup works or if there are any cracks in the body, so I walk in to the studio to check on it. Yup... a few cracks along the joint between the top and the sides. Not good... that kind of structural crack really hurts the value of a vintage guitar. But the pickup plug appears to be repaired, which I didn’t actually remember doing. So I walked over to an amp and plugged it in to make sure it worked.

Play...

Play...

(...)

”What are you, fucking CRAZY, Dave? You are NOT selling this guitar!!!”

Damn you, little Guitar-Collecting-Voice-In-My-Head!! He's right, though... it plays SO nicely. It's got such a solid neck... perfect for the blues, and it's an awesome guitar for playing slide. Ok... well, what about this Silvertone archtop? It needs new bushings and, look... the finish is all crackly, and... and...

And...?

(Take it off the wall... hold it...)

”My god... it’s beautiful.”

Shit. I’m stuck with ALL of them, aren’t I?
  (posted by Dave at 10:32 PM || )

  a noble act...

I registered a piece of “shareware” today. Can you believe that?? Not a cheapie, either... $25!! But I finally sucked it up and paid for it, because it IS something I use every day. I think it’s only the second time I’ve ever done that. I feel like it makes up for the thousands of dollars of pirated Microsoft and Adobe programs on my hard drive. A little. I feel “atoned” anyway.

In a completely unrelated consumer act, I bought myself the Complete Beethoven Symphonies on CD today. (The classic Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic versions) It’s something I’ve always wanted, and it was $34, and I had an $18 Borders gift card, and a 20% corporate discount, and so I figured... a 5-cd set for $11? Yeah... it’s time.

I rocked out to Symphony #1 in C-major on the way home. The seventh is my favorite, though. I could become one of those really obnoxious, elitist, classical music wankers if I wanted to. Maybe when I hit 40.
  (posted by Dave at 10:32 PM || )

  Platforms 'R' Us...

Last week while watching my favorite TV show, I concluded that the success of Survivor must be a huge boon to the manufacturers of floating platforms. I never would have thought there even was such an industry, but there they are... every week on Survivor... every year in a different part of the world... out there in some lagoon, standing on a floating platform, so... SOMEBODY must make them. I wonder if you go to Marquesas and pick up a Yellow Pages, if there is a section devoted to floating platforms with a big quarter page ad for AAA Floating Platforms Inc. – “As seen on the hit CBS show SURVIVOR!”  (posted by Dave at 10:57 AM || )

  oh look... he knows how to read...

I can't think of anything to write about, so instead I've added one of those obnoxious 'What book am I reading' boxes to my right column in order to prove how smart and well read I am. I'll conveniently refrain from mentioning the copies of Playboy and Maxim that share the nightstand, however.  (posted by Dave at 12:56 PM || )

  no... after you...

My office at the New School overlooks the college’s courtyard, which one enters from either building through a revolving door at each end. Sometimes I just stare out my window and watch people go through the revolving doors, and I’m becoming very interested in the instantaneous little “social contract” that happens between people as they approach a revolving door from opposite sides. ”Are you going first? Am I going first? Are we going to go through at the same time?” Because you have to adjust your pace just a tiny bit to make sure the process goes smoothly. And I’ve seldom seen the process break down... like when you wind up doing the Sidewalk Shuffle with someone because you can’t decide who is going to pass on which side. I’ve never seen anybody get themselves crushed or be forced to stop moving altogether while waiting for the other person. It’s very interesting.

And the whole thing makes me want to do really geeky things like wire up motion detectors to measure the speeds of people as they approach revolving doors, or to model the whole process with a computer program. Some part of me thinks that there must be underlying principle that could be applied to data packet transmission or nuclear scattering or... something.

It’s a horrible thing to be a science nerd sometimes.

Dave
  (posted by Dave at 10:46 AM || )

  little miss darwin...

Katie and I were watching her new “Eyewitness: Dinosaur” video today, and she suddenly pipes up from the sofa...

“I have a problem. I don’t understand how the first people were born. Because if they were BORN then they must have had parents... and then... ??”

Oh, crap.

Thus followed a very short (and perhaps slightly dismissive) account of the Adam and Eve Myth, followed by a lengthy explanation of the Theory of Evolution, pitched at a 5-year-old’s level, complete with a trip online to look at pictures of Australopithecines and a discussion of how little dogs have been bred from wolf-like ancestors through thousands of years of artificial selection.

I’m exhausted. How do people who AREN’T scientists deal with these questions??

Dave

(PS: The best part was when I explained that humans changed slowly over years and years from types of creatures who weren’t QUITE the same as people, she said – “Yeah, when I was thinking about it and trying to figure out I thought that maybe they could have been born from animals or something.” which is not terribly far from the truth.)

  (posted by Dave at 3:53 PM || )

  Happy Chocolate Pagan Fertility Symbol Day...!

If you’re not particularly Christian, and you don’t spend the entire day in Church reflecting upon how great it is that Jesus got himself nailed to a cross so that you don’t have to, there are few holidays as lame as Easter. Because, minus the Jesus stuff, the celebratory aspects of Easter become simply...

A) That you don’t have to go to work. (Which you wouldn’t anyway because, duh... it’s always on Sunday. Whose idea was THAT?)

B) You get to eat lots of chocolate and candy. (Which also... I do all the time ANYWAY.)

C) The kids fight over plastic eggs instead of... well... everything else.

Yippee.

If I don’t get presents, get laid, or get to blow things up... it’s not really much of a holiday, in my opinion.

D.
  (posted by Dave at 8:14 PM || )