Home of the Interval and the Interstice

Photo courtesy of Peter Kahn

 

"...and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent."

L. Wittgenstein
Preface to the
Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus

People¬

megnut	sapphireblue
ev	kottke.org
joejava	zeldman
leuschke	stairwaytonevin
moira	joho
cavebutter	Rudy Park

Places¬

Portland, Oregon
I don't know Andrew but he has nice pictures.

National Motor Lifeboat School
I used to do this kind of thing long ago.

Manhattan
...is this a place or a thing?

Things¬

Google	TheStandard
The Onion	NASDAQ
Wish List	email

INTJs for you and me...profile and history...more fun than a corporate retreat...

Kind of Blue
never leave home without it.

Weather
one of the last real things in our lives. the weather. watch it. be in awe. really.

 

Old News¬

2001
January
Feburary
March
April

That's all for now.

 

 

The always fun web traffic analysis...here're the last twenty search engines and terms that resulted in someone or other viewing SPblog, complete with editorial comments...

09 Apr, Mon, 06:00:21 Google: interstice+space
10 Apr, Tue, 11:14:10 Google: alter ego wireless
10 Apr, Tue, 21:05:15 Google: intjs stress (this wasn't me, I swear)
11 Apr, Wed, 11:09:06 Yahoo: Alter Ego Wireless
13 Apr, Fri, 00:14:34 Google: baby foxes (huh?)
17 Apr, Tue, 13:06:34 Yahoo: orange juice carton freezing (funny how databases work, isn't it!)
20 Apr, Fri, 23:48:01 Yahoo: megnut tree
21 Apr, Sat, 00:12:36 Google: moira blog (G, was this you?)
24 Apr, Tue, 09:14:38 Google: "charms to soothe the savage breast" and quote
25 Apr, Wed, 05:01:52 Yahoo: poon-tang (I don't even want to know)
28 Apr, Sat, 20:01:25 Google: strategy park
04 May, Fri, 09:39:24 Google: "blogging tools"
05 May, Sat, 18:08:20 Yahoo: alter ego character
12 May, Sat, 16:09:17 Google: "vernor's ginger ale" (So, there's someone else with good taste out there...)
16 May, Wed, 12:40:24 Google: half dozen eggs in a carton + photo
16 May, Wed, 13:20:08 Google: Francisco Bernioz Cubism (um, who? what?)
18 May, Fri, 22:11:47 Google: ornery housewives (this escapes me...I don't think I've ever written 'ornery'...)
23 May, Wed, 09:50:37 Yahoo: zingermans bakehouse (bread, bread, bread...)
24 May, Thu, 08:58:36 Google: blogger email notification
24 May, Thu, 12:37:43 Google: blogger email notification

I have what I consider to be the world's best hairdresser. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. Back when I was earning decent cash, I spent $40 every six weeks or so and was treated to a rarity. A craftsman who delivers quality everytime. She is also a massage therapist, has a great sense of style, and really expensive high quality German scissors (which she let me hold once if I promised not to drop them). I get the whole neck/head massage thing during the shampoo and then I sit and smell nice things for awhile while she cuts what's left of my hair. Her coworker once described her as an old soul. I can believe it. She takes lots of art classes and travels quite a bit and always has something insightful and wise to say, although we don't actually talk much. But I've been going there for six years and a few scattered conversations 8 or so times a year can add up. She is from Chicago. She told me once that I asked her the most intelligent question about hair cutting she'd ever been asked by a client (I'd asked her if the attraction to cutting hair was about the hair or about the people). She is, of course, terribly sexy and I've got a bit of crush on her in that way that happens sometimes when people you don't know very well touch you for long periods of time. Getting my hair cut was always a treat and I kind of looked forward to it in an odd sort of way. It wasn't the obvious pleasures so much as the realization that I was doing something nice for myself and that I had the good sense to realize it. Now that I'm not making decent cash, I haven't been but once this year and I kind of miss it.

I have often had conversations with a friend who grew up in Jersey about what it was like to be raised in a blue-collar union environment in the East and Midwest. The rivalry between competing locals, the close knit relationships that develop between and among families, the grift and corruption in the granting of contracts and the reality that this context is the very life and livelihood of the people involved. You depended on these people and these organizations to support you, to protect you and to celebrate life with you. You were an integral part of not only their successes, but their failures. There were rules, blood was thicker than water and, like it or not, your reputation was tightly linked to those you worked with and for. This is a huge part of American history and shaped family life, governments, the layout and functioning of cities and towns, created one of the most productive nations in the world and it wasn't always pretty.

James Gray has created an honest, startling and well-textured portrayal of this reality in The Yards. A young and critically acclaimed director who grew up in Queens, NY, Gray returned to his hometown and produced a well-balanced and genuine work of art with this film. It serves to enforce my own notion that, while art may imitate life, without life there is no art. There is beauty and grace in our daily lives and it is there that we find a rich panoply of human character in full contact with the world and its movement forward in time. In this union there are rules and, like it or not, success is often dependent on those you work with and for. It shapes our lives and our families and it isn't always pretty. It is films like Gray's that can remind us this union is art in the making.

Wow. The longest break in more-or-less continuous blogging at SP yet. Sixteen days. In the time, I've been invited to a wedding, cleared a clog in my kitchen sink, seriously investigated opening a hot dog stand, rode my bicycle a lot more, cooked breakfast on the gas grill outside on the deck, had kosher foods explained to me in some detail, seriously considered selling everything I own (minus books and electronics--what does *that* say about me?) and moving to Mexico, wore my short pants and a linen shirt outside at night (it's become very warm and sunny recently), started and didn't finish a blog entry, heard well over half a dozen people in two cities describe their joy and surprise at how much AC/DC still rocks, made substantial and more-or-less permanent changes in my diet after staying up all night and reading Dr. Weil's tome, made my annual transition to iced coffee in the afternoon (did I mention it's become very warm and sunny recently?), did a bunch of research for my brother on the demographics of cities that he is thinking about expanding his business into, and noticed that when my facial hair gets long enough there is a noticable amount of gray included.

How many lead singers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One, if the world revolves around him like it should.

How many guitar players does it take to screw in a lightblub? Five. One to screw in the lightbulb and four to complain they could do it better.

What do you call a musician who broke up with his girlfriend? Homeless.

How do you get a musician off the front porch? Pay for the pizza.

I've been hanging out with the punk rockers far too much...

You may have noticed that the little # of comments at the end of each post has disappeared. Apparently, there are some significant cycle savings to be had on the BlogVoices server by removing that bit of functionality. It also used to be the case that a blogger could get an email notification when a new comment was posted (which still doesn't help the reader much) but I've never known about that anyway. All in all I'm confused.

Apparently, dotcomments is the way to go.
____________________________
3.28.2001

Last month, Rob described a procedure in which a user could save the BlogVoices JavaScript file to his/her account and avoid all page-load delays caused by BlogVoices. This procedure will more than likely become mandatory in the coming week (or two). Why? Of the 125,000 hits BlogVoices receives per day, only 9,000 of those are actually comment windows popping up. The remaining 116,000 are requests to "count the comments." I realize the comment count is one of the more popular features BlogVoices has to offer, but the truth of the matter is --- neither Pyra nor I have the resources to support the amount of computing power required to provide that kind of data.
http://www.blogvoices.com/

Testing....1,2,3 testing.....http://www.kord.dns2go.com
firewall in place, server running....let me know if you can see the damn thing....