The EPA should fine my landlady for polluting the air. My furnace
makes the outside smell terrible every time it heats the house. Now,
I don't want my landlady to really be fined but it does bother me
that the furnace that is heating my house, pollutes the air so badly.
It really stinks. I worry that birds using the suet feeder or deer
walking nearby will be breathing this terrible air. I used to think
it was a bus passing by but it is my house.

My new guilty pleasure - Superbus - Tchi Cum Bah

Cat is back on insulin

The vet put my cat back on insulin today. She'd been diagnosed as diabetic two years ago but taken off insulin about a month after that when it was doing more harm than good. We've been using Purina DM (dry mix) seemingly successfully since then. It's too dry but perhaps has been improved since they now line the bags with foil, after I complained to them that the food was too dry, coincidentally or not to my writing them.

I am probably more worried than the cat at this point. I don't look forward to giving her her shots. Apparently she took them well at the vet today so let's hope that continues to go well.

More as it comes.

New Year's Eve at my house

On the food menu:
1 - Shrimp platter. The 12oz version, from Thailand, little shrimp.
Next time I should get some real big, sweet, LA shrimp. More
expensive but worth it. I thought a whole shrimp platter would do me
but I'm still hungry so on to the Marie Callendar's Fettuccine
Alfredo, this time with fresh pepper, provided by my sister Sue
(thanks!) since they don't provide pepper anymore. Cheapskates. The
pepper turns out to have a little flavor of something I'm not wild
about so I may not use it that much. (red peppers? green peppers?)
Marie Callendar's had a good pepper that used to be included in the
box...
- As much McCormick's Irish Cream liqueur as I want. I usually buy
Bailey's but it is much more expensive. Started drinking at about
8:30. Also have a nice supply of Yuengling's Black and Tans ready to
go. The supermarket doesn't stock their porter.
- Have Boston Cream Pie, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and
chive cheese dip ready to go (whoopie!) but that fettuccine seems to
have filled me up.

On the entertainment menu:
8-11 The Big Broadcast on FUV. Some nice 20s and 30s music.
10- 1 Prairie Home Companion on PBS. Radio on the tv. Rare.
At 11, I'll tape Peter Bochan's Short Cuts on BAI. Always a good New
Year's Eve compilation of the year in sound. Probably will be too
much crappy pop music but should be some good soundbites.

(I re-foamed (put a new foam ring around the cone cuz it really blew
a night or two ago) the right speaker today so it is hopefully ready
for whatever loudness I throw at it tonight.)

Sound like fun, right?. Wouldn't you want to be with me? Ha!

(Getting harder to type the more I drink... Only 2/3 through my first
tall glass so far.)

I love Thai ice tea. So, with it being time to drink egg nog now, I
have ended up having egg nog left over in my glass which I'm too lazy
to wash out or replace so I pour some ice tea in there, my drink of
choice the rest of the year and voila'. I have egg nog ice tea.

What do you think of that? Gross or good?

I love it. As long as the egg nog isn't too spicy, which most store
bought egg nogs aren't, it works.

Should it be called something else? New England ice tea? What would
you call it?

My Darlin' New Orleans

I enjoyed the New Orleans benefit at Riverspace last night. The readings were thoughtfully chosen and evocative. The singing was excellent. I hope lots of money
was raised. My $20 was the first in the cardboard box. It did go on a
little long though, I thought.

But let me be picayune (inside joke).

Two names were mispronounced. One was the Sho Bar, pronounced shoe
when it should have been show. Made it sound like like some NY fetish
bar, giving it some cachet which it probably never had. The other was
a street name but I forget which street. (And it wasn't a Bur-GUN-dy,
like the natives say, vs BUR-gun-dy, how normal English is pronounced,
kind of mistake.)

I did love the characterizations of Truman Capote and Andrei Codrescu.
Can anyone tell me what the Winona Ryder-like woman was talking about
in French?

The Jonathan Demme film wasn't much of a film yet. The first half
endless shots of the devastation that still remain thanks to George W
Bush, FEMA and the Republican party. The second half. an interview
with (? Parker?) in her dark shell of a house. I do look forward to
seeing the finished product. It is always good to see the humor that
defines New Orleanians present - "House for Sale, Needs some work" and
"One pissed dog" are two spray-painted messages I remember.

I wasn't sure what the music that played during the devastation scenes
was meant to say. A nice fiddle piece, reminiscent of the late great
Johnny Cunningham to me, but not relevant that I could tell, unless it
is a contemporary piece, hopefully by a New Orleans or LA musician.
(And did anyone notice that a French Canadian song was played during
the slide show? I love French Canadian music but I'm not sure what the
connection was there other than it being French.)

And for the food served afterwards, I'm no expert on gumbo but
shouldn't it always have roux? Wouldn't that prevent the sausage from
ending up looking unappetizingly waterlogged grey? It was tasty
though. (It is probably responsible for waking me up at 5 am to think
about these things and my getting up to write this before the sun
rose.)

A tip to the band who played the half-hearted New Orleans covers
(Walkin' To New Orleans, Jambalaya, etc). While New Orleans bands may
not always play on key, and thankfully you did, one thing they don't
lack is passion. I did enjoy hearing Holy Cow though...

Eh la bas.

John L

Charlie Rose (on DirecTV) continues to have these video glitches (digital artifacts). Here is one shot OUTSIDE of the studio. How come these things still happen?

Half jelled

I went to the Riverspace Jazz Cafe in Nyack yesterday. First time
I've been in that theater. My impression is that while it is an
interesting space, it has some problems.

1) It smells. When I first got there at around 4 pm, it smelled
moldy. Who knows what mold lurks. (The snack bar also looked like the
Health Inspector should visit it, The counter hadn't been cleaned and
there was food all over it. I think that was cleaned later but when
the food arrived the counter was ugly/gross.)

2) It was cold. It did warm up after more people arrived by the time
the jazz jam started but until then it was cold. Maybe they could
turn the heat up until it gets warm?

3) It was too loud. I tried to figure out why. The acoustic bass
wasn't amplified as far as I can tell so I think it was the kick drum
and the tom tom. Using them muddied the sound to the point of making
it damn near unlistenable. When other drummers used a lighter touch,
it was quite nice. Some acoustic materials may be needed though. I'd
recommend banning the use of the kick drum and the tom tom. It'd help
a lot.

The music in the first set didn't do anything for me. Free jazz but
not very interesting, to me. Maybe to others. Good for them.

The jazz jam was better. I could understand what they were doing.
There are some talented people who showed up. Especially notable was
the woman singer; I didn't get her name.

So, all in all, it kinda half-jelled for me. The jazz jam was good.
The first part wasn't.

And one note about the bathrooms. The men's room is "decorated" on
the inside with graffiti by the door. A very poor choice. And they
think they are being clever by painting over anything that is
recognizable as the door so you can't tell where the door is. You'll
be able to get out but some sort of clue would be nice as to where
the door is.

I love the angels. Another person I spoke with hated them. I couldn't
figure out why.

I am very excited about the upcoming programs there. It looks like a
very interesting lineup.

It's that time of year again

OK. It's that time again. Christmas, Hanukkah, the solstice.

Here are some sites to check out:

The Christmas Light Finder
Look for houses nearby that have overdone Christmas displays
http://www.christmaslightfinder.com/

Also good, the PlanetChristmas "Showing Off" section:
http://www.planetchristmas.com/ShowingOff.htm

Ah, but for MOVING pictures with MUSIC, check out these!
http://www.lightorama.com/Videos.html
(The music for some of them, Wizards in Winter, is by the Trans
Siberian Orchestra and is perfect for these hilarious displays.)

Surely the apotheosis of American culture.

More goodies here (including Halloween and other musical light displays):
http://www.animatedlighting.com/showcase/customershows.asp#

I'll leave it at that. I'm getting queasy and I haven't even had any
eggnog yet.

So, I've been away from this for awhile.

Two pics to add.

A nice full moon.



And pareidolia ((the perception of a pattern where none is intended). I've been seeing this face in a cellophane bag for awhile. I think it looks like either Shakespeare or Pirandello. In reality it is a bunch of cables and a pair of headphones in a cellophane bag with the morning sun shinning through it.


Pic is turned sideways. That's a letter shelf it is sitting in.

1st snow of the season, a slight flurry this morning as the sun was shining.

This just in: John Bolton is stepping down! Hallelujah!!! Whoo hooo!
Good riddance.

President Jimmy Carter is showing up on tv in the same jacket I just
bought! Makes me feel better about the fashion changes it has: padded
shoulders and a higher cut in the front.

The last jacket I bought was in the mid 70s or so. It was time to buy a new one.

Amory Lovins, CEO, Rocky Mountain Institute, for President! Saw him on Charlie Rose tonight. Brilliant, visionary, can get us out of dependency on oil and thus relieving us of its effects/consequences.

If only he would run. Imagine, for  a change, having someone intelligent, brilliant, leading us.

New piece of trash visible: A green plant pot, near the grey bucket.
Pics to come.

My shadow after a haircut. My newly discovered big ears are what inspired this.

Just saw a flock of wild turkeys saunter throught the woods at a somewhat fast pace. Took some movies of them but they are not worth posting. Always good to see them here.

List of visible garbage expands to 4. A reddish clay or plastic flower pot can
be seen, in certain lights. Pics to come.

Visible garbage in my neighbors' yards: count grows to 3

My view out back is of a nice woods. In that woods are a piece of litter here, a piece of garbage there.

The yellow thing that I thought was a Linden's butter cookie wrapper
turns out to be a coffee can.

I also see a rusting bucket and close to another neighbor's lawn, a
plastic water jug. What slobs. And I have to look at
this all winter and spring, until the weeds and bushes grow back
again. I would venture back there to clean them up myself but I don't
want to trespass. I may post pictures at some point. (I'm sure the
count will grow too.)

I also worry that any of the wildlife I see will hurt themselves
stepping on this crap. I've found broken glass, barbed wire, all
kinds of manmade crap on the edge of my property. All you have to do
is dig a little under the leaf cover; you'll find all kinds of
garbage. It really is a minefield. Who knows what else is back there?

I watered the geranium today for the first time since I'd brought it
in back in September. As I was pouring the water in I could smell the
slight fragrance they give off. I'd like to think they were thanking
me.

The god-damned Christmas ads have started on tv, goddam it.