farrah’s Neighborhood

Is there a term for the things that suddenly turn up on the internet that have likely been around for a while and you just weren't paying enough attention? There probably is. It's probably a term that people on the internet are using that has been for a while and I just wasn't paying enough attention.

I "found" this oldie on Last.fm. It's a live clip of Ash doing "Wild Surf," my favorite song from their second album Nu-Clear Sounds. There's an killer chord progression four bars before the chorus that makes it for me. Well, that and Charlotte Hatherley, whose backing vocals, on the studio version, always worked wonders.

Here, we see her freshly initiated into the band. She may have a touch too much heroin chic going on, but I still fall for her. And she nails a biting solo.

Last night, I was at the dinner table with Mitsuki, going over some math problems. There’s a focus on mathematics in the First Grade, we discovered. To support this, we’re been giving her extra math problems after she completes her homework. We make up these one-minute math tests (20 addition or subtraction problems), as well as some word problems (“James saw Star Wars three times. Then, he saw Up twice. Finally, he saw Madagascar 5 times. How many times did he go to the movies?”).

I gave her a visual-pattern question:

Complete the pattern.
 
square triangle square square triangle square triangle triangle square triangle square {blank} triangle square triangle {blank}
 
Hint: Break up the shapes into groups of four

Well, she didn’t get it at first. We looked at the hint together. Then I divided the shapes into groups of four:
 
square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle
square triangle square {blank}
triangle square triangle {blank}
 
As I said them aloud, she said, “Wait, I’ve heard this before.” She was remembering the bilateral move in aerobics wherein the exercise – such as a jab or tilt of the head – alternates sides, in the pattern of single single double (or, left right left left, right left right right).
 
Then, it clicked. “Oh!” she said and grabbed for the pencil and filled in the blanks.
 
square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle
square triangle square square
triangle square triangle triangle
 
It was quite gratifying to see that a) she could get her arms around this new type of problem, b) she recalled the musical/dance pattern and could related it to the math problem, and c) she (hopefully) walked away with a new technique for finding patterns.
 
Then, the kicker. What I was waiting for. Before she could move onto the next thing, I said, “Wait, I want to show you something” and I wrote R above the squares and L above the triangles. “This is also a drumming pattern,” and I played it for her.
 
RLRR LRLL RLRR LRLL
 
Half surprised, I watched her take it slow and tap it on the dinner table. It was easy for her.
 
“That,” I concluded, “is called a paradiddle.”
 
“A para-diddle?” she repeated and laughed.
 
I’d been waiting years to teach her that, and it took all but 5 minutes for her to get it.

I was listening to KFOG's "New Music Thursday" last night, and at a crucial moment in the evening, Chris Isaak's "We've Got Tomorrow" popped on.

Isaak, who is a local boy and a longtime favorite of mine - long before Helena Christensen and his subsequent over-exposure - has been putting out records consistently since "Wicked Game." But I hadn't heard anything in a long while that stuck with me.

I know he's got more to him than the flaccid, cliché-heavy songs that make it to the radio, so with every new song I hear I pin hopes that he hasn't shot his bolt.

But this one, from his recently dropped "Mr. Lucky" album, sounds promising. There's still a hint of sap in his trademark croon, but we have a bonafide love song with a positive outlook for once. There are more than the usual changes. Some jaunty horns. Some tasty guitar. Things are looking up. Good job, Chris.

// EDIT #2: The website Seeqpod has closed down. So, there goes my playlists, as well as access to many of the songs I picked. :-(  But my Dropbox still works. // Doug, 16-JUL-2009 13:47 PST

// EDIT: I noticed the Dropbox links weren't working well, so I eliminated the spaces in the filenames and updated the links below. Let me know if you have any problems.  // Doug (aka, BossaNova) 26-Mar-2009 10:32am PST

Streaming audio from my Dropbox:

• Mike Viola's "So Much Better" (1:50)
• Pizzicato Five's "Cleopatra 2001" (5:21)
• Joshua Redman's "Chill" (7:41)

Depending on how intelligent your browser is, and yet still comes up short, you might have to right-click those links above, copy the URL and paste it into your Winamp or other media player, etc.

After renting Mr. Children's Q album from the public library, I find myself addicted to a batch of songs (tracks 9-11), including this one.

This is yet another example of me having yawned through several (hundred) appearances of this band on Japan's "Hey Hey Hey" music program only to discover how fantastically melodic and diverse they are, hearing other songs.

There's also an English subtitled video of "Road Movie" (Youtube), for those Nihongo impaired like me. Are these guys' lyrics always so full of detailed and philosophical? That's for me to find out, I guess.

(Silly me for misreading ムービー as "ma-a-bi-i" instead of "mu-u-bi-i." That will make your Googling for translated lyrics that much harder.)

A shimmering monochrome rainbow in a sky full of crows.
A zoo where no one is smiling.

The streetlights show me a future 2 seconds ahead.
The motorcycle races
to a pleasure of passing the darkness laid out in even intervals.
Speed up a little more now.
Racing on to the next future.

I'm pretty sure there's a goal line somewhere along this road.
I bring that vision with me.

Isn't it great when you find a band (or anything, for that matter) that gets you excited and fills you with longing for more? Simply energizing. Revives your belief that there are so many pockets of beauty out there; you just have to keep rummaging. The fun is doing it among the sales items or (as in the case of Japanese music CDs at your local library) the rentables and those available for free.

Motivational speaker is a title with bad connotations. That is, until you hear someone speak who moves you. And by move, I mean you palpably feel the center of your self, sitting inside your body, being pushed off its chair. And you are left empty of the words used to describe the person who moved you. 

Amid recent thoughts of What makes a leader?, I was given a video of the Vice Chairman of the company I work for, NetApp. In the video, Mr. Tom Mendoza (no relation... shucks!) talks about how NetApp came through the bursting of the tech bubble in 2001 (big zoom-out level) and how each person with a little self-examination, self-accepting, and commitment to the self can set you on course (micro zoom-in personal level).

The presentation is entitled "The Power of Corporate Culture" (player embedded in the page), but don't let the big-business sound of it repel you. Neither that nor the motivational-speaker platform of it. Running time: 67 minutes.

Hosted at: Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University

Presidents-elect typically stick to naming administration appointments and otherwise staying in the background during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, but Obama has clearly made the calculation that a nation anxious about its economic outlook needs to hear from him differently and more frequently.

Speaking a day after the release of a stunning new deficit estimate — that the federal red ink will reach an unprecedented $1.2 trillion this year, nearly three times last year's record — Obama acknowledged some sympathy with those who "might be skeptical" of the stimulus. Vast sums already have been spent or committed by Washington in an attempt — largely unsuccessful so far — to get credit, the lifeblood of the American economy, flowing freely once again.

From Obama warns of dire consequences without stimulus (AP)

RIAA to Stop Suing Music Fans, Cut Them Off Instead from Wired.com

By Eliot Van Buskirk | December 19, 2008 | 10:26:17 AM | Categories: Music

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In just a couple of hours, the polls will open on the East Coast. Many have already voted. But tomorrow is the official day, one with the big turnout - record-setting and historic - with the winner decided by nighttime. Hopefully. We've heard the news polls. Double digits. We feel the sway. Young voters coming out in support of Obama.

But goddamn if I don't feel anxious.

I've been on edge all day. No doubt, you too have heard the general worry. Mass purging. Caging. Vote stealing. Computerized flipping. This time, (some of) the general public knows what has been done to it. Like in 2000. Again in 2004. Why didn't Democrats cry foul? What's wrong with you? Now we have to steal back our vote.

To call into question the sacred method by which individuals make their voices heard pulls the pins from the braces of democracy. Truth hurts, but silence is more deadly here, Mister Congressman. Look where this war for oil and its imperialist agenda has led us, Mrs. Speaker of the House. Instead of salvaging ideas from this shattered heap of democracy, you've even let them sweep that away.

Why did they* do this to us? Who made them the Kings?

Mark Crispin Miller, author of "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election," laid it bare. In 2004, the big heist had three things that made it distinct from all the countless frauds of the past. 1) Scale. 2) Technology used. And 3) Motive. The third is the most sinister. Miller posits that they* did not do it for greed or power. Instead, they did it out of contempt for the American public. Yes, deep hatred for those regular peoples. We know nothing and they know what's the Holy Good for America. They are doing justice for their cause by leading us away to a different room - the complaint department - while the real work continues in the main building. The War Room.

They* built up the boogie man in order to drum up a cause, which is: to fight it. The nation defined itself in a similar cause once before in the Fifties through the Eighties, under an iron chill, and the nation will reclaim its identify once again. The cause is big, like a blue whale, and by the way there's fertile ground along the flanks for free market friends. It's there for the taking. Just blood suck it. Here, we'll underwrite it for you. Pay no mind to the million dead.

The world protested and still protests. Some of whom live here.

I hope we still have that power to protest. I hope we haven't had our bullhorns taken away.

* The shot-callers