I’m sick. It’s 2:16 in the morning and I absolutely can’t sleep. The decongestant I took earlier in the day is refusing to play nice with the mouthful of hopefully not rancid NyQuil I downed a good four hours ago. At any rate the dark room is pulsating with that awful clarity of dilated eyes and the thing I can’t stop thinking about is how a single simple idea can explode with unpredictable and uncontrollable complexity into a full-blown novel.
Rewiring A Castle In The Middle Of The Night And It’s Raining
I’m a software engineer. Been doing it for about four years. I work on large, old web applications. Working on large, old web applications, even if you’ve been doing it for decades, is one of the most insanely daunting things a human being will ever do. This is true: the most complex structures ever created by mankind are computer programs. The large hadron collider at CERN is a distant second. To say the learning curve at software jobs is immense captures neither the scope nor the horror of the experience, so I figured I’d come up with a metaphor.
Only what metaphor? What image could convey this Lovecraftian terror, this yawning chasm of insanity into which only the maddest of us are brave enough to gaze, to laugh hysterically until we choke on our own tongues and die?
My Top 20 Favorite Albums
I recently wondered what I would pick if forced to choose my top 10 favorite albums. It took days. In the end I realized it was impossible, so I expanded the list to 20, which didn’t make it much easier.
These are the albums I could never live without:
Hey, That’s Me On The Radio!
One day in 2008 I was hanging out at home listening to Groove Salad on SOMA FM when I heard a familiar sound… the intro to a song I wrote, produced, and recorded in 2000!
Continue readingThe Problem Of Charlie Bucket’s Greed
[Update: I re-watched Willy Wonka three years after writing this post and have a few more thoughts. I don’t know why I assumed it took place in England; it must have been the Dickensian last names that threw me, along with the quintessentially English schoolteacher. But none of the other kids (or Charlie’s family members for that matter) have English accents. I can’t pin down exactly where the story is supposed to take place, but I guess it must be somewhere in America, which makes Wonka’s nationality less intrusive. (I understand it was filmed in Germany, but that doesn’t help explain the plethora of American accents.)
Mixtape Alert: Extended 80s Hits
This mix needs no introduction. Over two hours of original 80’s pop extended versions, all mixed up. Come and get it!
Summer Music Roundup: An Ode To The LP
It’s been a truism for years now that playlists have supplanted albums in a serious way. Music comes to us in dribs and drabs, of varying genre, popularity, and sound quality. Our iPods are less like a well-organized bookshelf of CDs and more like a garage filled with worn boxes of 45’s and cassingles.
David Sylvian & Robert Fripp – Darshan Remixes
While I confess I never listened to their full length CD The First Day, I nonetheless adore this small collection of remixes from Sylvian and Fripp’s 1993 collaborative period.
Continue readingThe Shining Codes: Utter Bulls**t, But Fun As Hell
I’m the first to admit that I adore conspiracy theories, even stupendously implausible ones. Actually, the more howl-at-the-moon ridiculous, the better. They are fascinating windows into our culture and our psyche. So here’s one about a movie that I’d memorized every frame of by the ag e of 12: The Shining.
Jason Herrboldt 