Dog Star Man in Doggy Nebula Heaven

I'm so tired, of playing
Playing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away
Leave it to the other girls to play
For I've been a temptress too long

Just...

Give me a reason to love you
Give me a reason to be ee, a woman
I just wanna be a woman

From this time, unchained
We're all looking at a different picture
Thru this new frame of mind
A thousand flowers could bloom
Move over, and give us some room

So don't you stop, being a man
Just take a little look from our side when you can
Sow a little tenderness
No matter if you cry

Give me a reason to love you
Give me a reason to be ee, a woman
It's all I wanna be is all woman

For this is the beginning of forever and ever
It's time to move over

-- Portishead, "Glory Box"

Ostara

Boulder-area folks: I'm hosting a spring equinox celebration at my house on Friday the 21st, complete with egg-hunting (but with a unique twist or seven). Let me know if you'd like to come.

---

Proof, if needed, that Flwyd is a geek

This morning, I dreamt about closing, that wonderful week where RAs run around making sure everyone leaves the residence halls with a minimal amount of damage and administrative headaches. This dream went through the entire process -- nagging residents to sign up for a checkout time, having a floor meeting about issues, taking finals, checking rooms for damage.

---

It's a wave! It's a particle! It takes up no space! It doesn't befuddle other waves! It's supermedium!

I just read an interesting article about the myth of radio interference. Essentially, with some better technology in place, the airwaves wouldn't need to be parceled off and controlled by single entities. Just like several people in a room can wear shirts with identical shades of green and not be confused, it's possible for multiple sources to broadcast different information at the same frequency.

The social implications are quite significant. First, small-time players can broadcast radio, ending the current domination of monopolistic focus-group-driven mindless crap that fills the airways today. There's nothing wrong with Top 40 radio. There's just something wrong with nothing BUT Top 40 radio. For those of you who aren't life-long community radio fundamentalists, implementing Reed's ideas would make it much easier for wireless devices to multiply and evolve freely.

---

Too bad he couldn't make a film about the experience

Stan Brakhage died on Monday. He was a very influential avant-garde filmmaker and a CU professor until last summer. I went to his Sunday evening film salons a few times, and came away with several interesting impressions.

First, to properly understand his films, traditional methods of movie watching must be discarded. I watched a series of his films "about" the Arabic numerals. They were made by painting directly on the celluloid. And only infrequently did an image appear resembling the number in question. He made another series of his films that I watched by holding colored prisms in his fingers and moving them around, casting interesting light patterns. Recognizeable objects where nowhere to be seen and narrative was completely and utterly absent.

His film showings weren't just exercises in narcisism. He showed other films he thought were interesting. I saw a short film by Godfrey Reggio (of Koyaanisqatsi "fame") of children staring forward, a little snot dripping, and NOT BLINKING. We learn, at the end of the film, that the shots were of children watching TV. He also showed some films with far too many recognizable images. And for reasons I don't understand, he was also really into documentary. He tought a course on the films of Ken Burns, for instance.

But I also came away with an impression of his approach to watching films. The film salon had the least pretentious setup possible. He'd announce that viewers could get up and leave any time they chose, and they could come back again, "which is perhaps the greatest freedom of all." After he'd shown some films he'd selected, he'd invite the viewers into a classroom and we'd share what we thought of them. He didn't claim or pretend to have a better understanding of "the meaning" of the films he showed. He'd share some things he was thinking when he made his own films, but encouraged people to talk about how the films made them feel. It was very much a casual intellectual atmosphere.

I stopped going to the film salons after a couple months, partly because I always seem to end up with requirements on Sunday nights. (I didn't get a chance to watch new Simpsons regularly through most of college.) I also confess that I'd leave with a large mental lump of confusion after watching his über-abstract films. I was probably trying too hard to understand them with the wrong sets of cognitive tools.

---

From someone else's childhood

I found a Carracho server with retro cartoon episodes. I've downloaded over half a gig of Fraggle Rock. I've never actually seen the show, and I haven't tried playing any of them yet. It might take me the first several months of the summer to evaluate everything I download in the next two months.