You know how one’s taste in music supposedly mellows as one ages? Maybe I’ve got the musical equivalent of Benjamin Button’s condition. Here’s a 45-minute mix of what I’m listening to now, which is mostly a very acidic strain of hard house and trance. Cruising at just shy of 145 beats per minute, this is not mature or sophisticated music by any standard: what it is, is just about the best kind of music to go running with.
At my professional blog, I’ve posted some notes and impressions on this year’s conference for NASSR (North American Society for Studies in Romanticism). But I ended up taking maybe more notes in general on the trip to North Carolina and the Duke U campus.
21 May 2009, 3 pm: The Al Buehler Cross Country Trail just showed me how out of shape I am: its 3.1 miles of unpaved, hilly forest trail required a few walking breaks; and before I finished its circuit, I got lapped by some speedster Olympian type. (I think I ate a few gnats as well.) Not that all the walking breaks were due to exhaustion. The trail steers through pretty pine and oak woodlands: carpets of dry red needles fragrant underfoot; a snapping turtle nosing the surface of a pond; a thumb-long black beetle; the unreconstructed remains of ancient iron aqueduct; unfamiliar birdsong in the canopy, sometimes nearly as voluble as Point Pelee last weekend, amply competing with the ambient surf of the adjacent highway. It’s the birdsong more than anything else so far (except maybe the “First in Flight” license plates) that tell you you’re somewhere different.
I’ll make time for this trail again, with a camera. To hype it for NASSR delegates, you might think of it as a “suggestive conjunction of the pictureseque and the technological sublime.” (There, now the entry’s topical.)
22 May 2009, 2:30-3:15 pm: Back to the trail for another run with some snaps, as promised.
Here’s a snippet of birdsong in the Carolinian forest:
But wow, is today ever hotter than it was yesterday. Maybe these aqueducts pipe water to the drinking fountains along the trail.
I thought this would get easier, not harder, the second time around. (Yeah, I got lapped again, by a different runner.)
23 May 2009, 2:30 pm: I went sightseeing on the Duke U west campus, dressed in my tourist best: hawaiian shirt, camera in hand, and still I got asked twice for directions. Maybe a game was on, definitely another conference was. I found the central green and the big ol’ Gothic cathedral everybody’s mentioned. A wedding was starting; the white dots going in are soldiers in dress uniform.
And singing its tame little heart out in a tree nearby was one of these ubiquitous birds that it occurred to me must be a mockingbird.
Listen to the variety of its singing — or is it sampling? — in just this short clip.
I found the Duke U centre and stocked up on souvenirs, including two postcards (which seem a bit moot as I write this). Amidst all the original and nouveau Gothic buildings on campus (even the parking garage stayed true to the weirdly unified style), there are also apparently spectular gardens I didn’t have time to see. As well as this artistic oddity, which I did.
Don't blink
And this:
signed by George W and Jay-Z, apparently
And, gardens aside, there were plenty of botanical oddities to see from the sidewalks:
Okay, am I at a literature conference or a biology one? A brown thrush escorted me back to the hotel.
3 pm: I had separated my recycling and trash but the housekeeper told me they don’t recycle. Come on.
11 pm: The banquet was thankfully free of the line-up for drinks that had congested the Thursday reception. Ended up having a micro-conference with a UWO colleague and his partner on kids, traveling with kids, and other adventures in parenting. Maybe the most important thing I learned while here was this — to keep the lines open with your kids, be sure to ask them these three questions every day:
1. Who did you play with today?
2. What was the best thing that happened to you today?
3. What was the worst thing that happened to you today?
I normally like to keep the personal and the professional distinct, but as we talked, I had to remark it was no coincidence I got interested in Frankenstein while expecting to become a parent.
I dusted off my Dr Teeth alter ego this weekend, having received an invitation from a former UNBSJ student of mine, DJ Joshi Toshi, to mix a set for his Eclectic Electric program on Saint John’s campus/community radio station, CFMH 107.3 FM.
Here’s a link to the set I played: a rewind of some top “speed garage” tracks, circa 1998. I know, I know, I need to get caught up on my house music. If you’ve been following this thread of the blog, you’ll know I’m slowly working my way through the late 1990s. By the end of this decade I should be done with my reviews of the last one.
The host promises to update his show’s blog soon, and it will include the mix as broadcast — as well as Joshi Toshi’s own mixes of current house, a whole new generation of killer basslines.
Track list:
[intro sample] Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice. Perf. Nadia May. Blackstone Audio, 1989.
Sneaker Pimps, “Spin spin sugar” (Armand’s Dark Garage mix). Virgin, 1996.
Nuyorican Soul featuring India, “Runaway” (Mongoloids in Space remix). Talkin’ Loud, 1996.
Tori Amos, “Professional widow” (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’ mix). Atlantic, 1995.
Double 99, “Ripgroove.” Satellite, 1997.
Janet Jackson feat. Q-Tip and Joni Mitchell, “Got till it’s gone” (Armand Van Helden Speedy Garagez mix). Virgin, 1997.
187 Lockdown, “Gunman.” EastWest, 1998.
Wideboys, “Rock the Download.” Garage Classics Vol. 2: Summer Edition. Ministry of Sound, 2008.
Soundscape, “Dubplate Culture.” Satellite, 1997.
Double 99, “Jump” (remix). Satellite, 1998.
Locust, “No One in the World” (Mongoloidian Killa Bees remix). Apollo, 1998.
De’Lacy, “Hideaway” (187 Lockdown Hidden Vocal dub). Deconstruction, 1998.
4th Gear, “Sick.” Deviate, n.d.
[outro sample] Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice. Perf. Nadia May. Blackstone Audio, 1989.
A process note: the first guest mix I ever did for radio, in 2000, was a live vinyl mix on the 1groove Internet radio station. (Back when Realmedia had the corner on streaming, bleagh!) Ironically, I pre-recorded this mix for a traditional FM station (with its now-obligatory streaming simulcast). And the mix itself is a composite: the Soundscape, Double 99, and Locust mix is a fragment of a vinyl mix I laid down a few years ago. (I excerpted it mostly for the Locus remix; it’s still too hot to have left out of a proper speed garage review.)
Last week we flew to Edmonton to look at houses. After two full days of looking at low-end bungalows, including one genuine druggie flophouse, we were a little deflated. The only great house we had seen was just out of our price limit. With just hours left in the city, we decided to re-visit that house. Our second look confirmed how well this house would work for us and we decided to make a rather low offer. And low and behold, it came back at a price we could pay! So pending financing and inspection, we flew home feeling like we almost owned a new home.
A few days went by and we realized that “pre-approved” isn’t really the safe place we had thought. Suddenly, the mysterious forces at one particular bank decided that the mortgage they had dangled in front of us could only be had one week before Mark’s new job start date. This date would have been an acceptable challenge, had we been told before we went out house hunting. But the offer on the table closes two months before this. Having sunk money into flights and cashed in four days of babysitting with the folks, it was a minor outrage.
Our mortgage broker’s flippant email tone didn’t help: “Good news is you got the mortgage. Bad news is that it isn’t until July 24.” No apology. No follow-up plan. And it was Friday evening.
Between Mark and I, we kept our panic in check. First thing Saturday morning we went to the bank to talk to a person face-to-face and hopefully get a better application together. That went well; the kind and sympathetic woman there told us she’d call us Monday afternoon to let us know — none of the insurers were open on weekends, so it would have to wait. That said, she said she saw no reason for the late possession date condition and left us feeling confident that it would all work out.
Then Sunday morning, with Mark already gone for a full-day conference, I checked my email to discover yet another late night email from our Edmonton broker. A different application was now all approved — no issues. Fine, uh, but…. why on earth is this news coming in at almost midnight on a weekend? How does this all work? Arrrrrrrrgh! When did she find this out? Why does this approval still leave me feeling angry and distrustful?
So, no big “Yay!” for now. I am still checking over my shoulder for the next issue I never suspected.
Yesterday, in a search for things to keep the kiddo entertained during March Break, A-dot and I took up the neighbour’s invitation to join him and his daughter for a family yoga class. It was taking place at the city’s market building, so it was an exciting venture into downtown for us, as well as some rare mommy and big girl time.
It’s been a while since I went to a yoga class and A-Dot has never been; for all that it was a perfect class. The space was a sunny second-floor clearing, overlooking the busy market, surrounded by the lunch crowd – no room for the self-conscious here. The teacher was young and bubbly. She made sure to emphasize the “animal” poses for the kids and she occasionally played a little guitar (songs about strength and potential). A-dot enjoyed being there, seeing what it felt like to bend her body in half and smiling at her fellow “tree” – her best buddy next door.
And now that we’re all chilled out and serene, we can get back to our week of unstructured nattering and chaos. (M)OMmmmmmmm
Here’s a mixtape that deserves more play: DJ Czech’s set (Side A and Side B) from the Dose/Syrous party to ring in 1999. We were there for that one, a massive something at the CNE. The set’s a solid mix of scratched-up funky breaks (heavy on Freestylers anthems). But the tape starts out with the DJ who was on before Czech, and a noisy MC bellowing about the new year. So I deleted all of that but the MC’s countdown, which leads into Czech’s opener: Prince’s “1999.” What a time warp: are we really already partying like it’s 2009?
As I tweeted last week, I’ve started digitizing old mixtapes. So here’s one of our faves, a DJ mix from about 1997 by Toronto’s DJ Brano, now split into Side A and Side B (for easier downloading). Whether Brano’s DJ career went anywhere or was a casualty of the high-turnover talent pool of Toronto’s fickle after-hours economy, I don’t know. What I do know is that this mix still kicks like a mule. I think we called this acid-happy-house-trance sound “progressive” then, but it’s a bit eclectic; it’s different from the “progressive” sounds of Deep Dish and the Global Underground series. (Eclectic selection is the scarce resource commanded by great DJs, but ironically it’s too often lost on a market tuned to bafflingly purist micro-niches.)
And the media trajectory’s its own story: here’s a DJ’s mix of vinyl records, mastered to a tape, mass produced on tape, dubbed on a double-cassette deck (anyone remember those?), digitized as an mp3, and uploaded to a file host. All so I can broadcast it (of all the played-out platforms!) from my iPod to the car stereo — which is where it used to get the most play, back when we had a car whose stereo played tapes (anyone remember those?).
PS: Anybody who can ID the first track and/or the track that mixes in at 46 minutes (it’s a happy number with piano and female vocals) will be thenceforth owed a huge favour to call in.
Last week we all went to a going-away/birthday party for one of adot’s school friends. (This is a high-turnover neighbourhood.) The hosts are a Muslim family but what we didn’t find out until the day of the party was that, because some of their highly orthodox friends would be attending, the party would be segregated: men upstairs, women and children downstairs.
At first I was a bit put off (mostly because Heather was already beat and would have to manage the kids solo at someone else’s house), but then I realized that here was a facet of multiculturalism entirely new to me – and one I had no right to judge. In any case we agreed to call it an evening in an hour, or once the cake was served. When we showed up, I was whisked upstairs to the makeshift men’s room, where we sat and talked as the din of kids downstairs steadily increased. The talk started out okay – we tried to figure out an immigrant colleague’s tax situation as a postdoc, which is vexing enough for non-immigrant postdocs like Yours Truly. And once more had showed up, the talk turned to other finer points of immigration, the neighbourly quality of Western family housing, and whose cars were superior: those from the USA, Europe, or Asia. All solidly manly topics.
But things started going wobbly when somebody in the room of largely middle eastern and south asian men made a Jewish joke. As the only white guy in the room I was asked (more embarrassedly than apologetically) if I was Jewish. After it became clear I wasn’t but I still hadn’t found it funny (no more than I’d find a middle eastern or south asian joke funny), I was then treated to one of the middle eastern guest’s interpretation of an obscure passage from Mein Kampf. Oy vay, how to change the subject? Here was a Palestinian explicating Hitler, and the Pakistani guy who’d cracked the Jewish joke backing him up. I said I sympathized with Palestine’s cause, and I have no qualms criticizing Israeli state policy, but that’s different from anti-Semitism and racism in general. (At this point, I asked them both why their people weren’t ganging up on Britain instead, since the UK’s postwar impositions had structured their respective regional conflicts.)
The arrival of a familiar face, a Serbian dad whose kids are in adot’s class, gave me an out: we talked about why hip hop doesn’t suck, and what music do you like, then, anyway? And I guess the cake showed up an hour after our agreed-upon parachute time: adot popped in the door at 9 pm, to tell me it was time to go home. Okay, I quickly said. All the men laughed and joked that she must be the boss of me. If she’s the boss, I thought, then who got to sit in a room of grown-ups, effectively relieved of parenting duties for two hours?
Still in all, despite the awkward moments, this was an interesting and instructive experience in the wages of multiculturalism.
When I pulled out the city Parks and Rec. Guide in December, to look at winter programs, I was disappointed to learn that I had missed signing up for one of the “Owl Prowl” nights in February. It probably didn’t jump out at me in August because A-Dot’s obsession with owls just started around Christmas. So I put our names down on the waitlist and hoped it might pan out.
As February approached and A-Dot repeatedly renewed a library book about owls, I realized how perfect an Owl Prowl night would be. And somewhere along the way it occurred to me that we didn’t have to hold out for the waitlist; we could do our own. The organized nights involved movies, activities, a night hike to call for owls and a chance to meet the owl at the local zoo. With the exception of the real owl, we could do all that. So I set the date and invited our six-year-old neighbour and her outdoorsy dad.
cute n' crafty
Our two little nature lovers started the evening with a craft project. They each adorned a pine cone with felt bits and googly eyes to make an awfully cute owl.
Next we sat down to two videos we borrowed from the library. Based on a story book, Owl Moon is a really charming story about a young girl and her dad who going owling. How perfect! (Watch it below.) Next was The Wonder Pets Save the Owl — only loosely topical but, gosh darn it, who can resist those Wonder Pets.
all sugared up and ready to hoot
Then we warmed everyone’s bellies with hot chocolate and played some owl calls to familiarize their ears. Then we bundled them up and sent them out to hoot for owls in the wild. As for what happened next, I’ll have to leave it up to Herr Doktor to tell, as EDB and I last saw them pulling out in the minivan …
[Virtual Dad takes the wheel]
The owling began inauspiciously: with a drive-by tour of the fabled closed-but-still-fluorescently-lit-inside institute for mentally challenged children (’My cycling group starts out from there all the time,’ quoth our neighbour), and then, on pinpointing our first owling destination, with a road-shoulder parking manoeuvre that almost tipped the car on its right side, with all of us still inside. Neighbour, most neighbourly, got out to push the front of the car while I powered into reverse, then manual-shift rocked it back up to the road, all the while Neighbour’s Kid, less than helpfully, shouted ‘Is my dad going to die? We’re all going to die!’
Anyway. Despite this less than promising start, we parked properly and traipsed into a wedge of forest between the road and a wide, frozen-over ravine. I was pleasantly surprised the girls took this seriously, and stayed very quiet after our faux owl calls to listen for replies from the foresty night. Neighbour pointed out depressions in the snow where deer slept (and left little souvenirs). The girls trained their flashlights on these, then on the trees above and resumed spooking each other out. This first stop actually yielded the closest thing to a sighting all night: we decided we had in fact heard an actual reply, though from afar, to one of our calls.
Our next stop was at a proper conservation park, but our calls went unanswered across the more open snowy fields to the dark treelines. The girls had great fun here, though, racing up and down the trails with their flashlights, discovering at one point a giant happy face that some artsy hooligan had stamped into the snow.
i'm smiling because my face froze that way
By the third stop, adot couldn’t stand still with the having-to-pee dance, so we called it and headed home. Again past the eerie closed-but-lit institution, and across an Oxford Street that looked increasingly and reassuringly more like civilization with every eastward kilometre.
We will be back next year, owls. Well, we’ll be back somewhere you’re expected to inhabit, to confuse your courtship habits afresh. Though maybe for next year’s foray, we’ll need to wear some bear spray.
Facebook is fun, it’s a Yearbook Of The Damned, it’s an entertaining time-sink. This much we know. It’s also becoming a huge magnet for new digital security threats. This much we’re just starting to learn. Here’s a quick briefing on my own Best Practices for secure (or as-secure-as-possible) Facebook use.
Need-to-know info. Your personal profile is a big data mine, not just a virtual Rolodex card for your friends’ convenience. Aside from the bare essentials–name and e-mail address–I show no contact or address info on Facebook. I don’t show my birthday. Work, education, book and music faves, sure; that stuff’s either already publicly accessible or irrelevant to all but the ad robots trying to sell me concert tickets.
Reference check (for self and others). Some security experts are projecting Facebook and similar services will become a big platform for identity hijacking: the creation of fake profiles who might appear to be you or someone you know but are actually operated by scamsters and criminals. Some security types suggest that you pre-empt that possibility by creating your own real profile ASAP (not to mention creating them in advance for your kids–now that’s planning ahead!). Conveniently, this recommendation also works as viral (and vaguely terroristic) marketing for Facebook and company. But there might be something to it.
If you’re already on a social media network, the problem becomes one of trusting requests from people you think you know. If you have other contact info for that person (e-mail or phone number), you could verify the contact that way. But for that out-of-the-blue high school friend who comes calling from halfway round the world, I don’t know what to suggest.
Never talk to strangers. This one’s easier, since it’s the same thing we teach kids in the non-Facebook, so-called “real world.” If you don’t at all recognize a requested contact, ignore them. Two anecdotes here:
1. I got a Friend Request this morning from a total stranger purporting to hail from Regina. Easy enough to ignore. But I Googled the name and the first search result was some Russian website. Definitely ignore.
2. Some stranger sent me a message asking if I was SoAndSo from WhereverTheFrack. Just because I’m not doesn’t mean I need to tell them so. Ignore that message; if you answer it, you let a stranger see your profile, friends, and content for a month. So ignore it. They’ll figure it out. (Assuming they even are who they say they are.)
To IP or not to IP? It was a colleague at UNB Saint John who first tipped me to the fact that Facebook claims de facto copyright on anything you post to it. Your status updates, your messages, your baby photos. It all becomes the intellectual property (IP) of Facebook. So think hard about what you want to give them without getting any royalty cheque in return.
Applications, schmapplications. For me, Facebook is all about status-line quips and edifying links. Okay, and baby pictures too. (As long as they don’t name names — I’m not kidding.) “What are you doing?” keeps me up on just that for my globally distributed peeps, and occasionally bloats into conversation threads. My contacts act as a collective critic, filtering and promoting the best of what’s current on the interwebs. And it’s a great way to maintain a kind of root-fire-level family reunion all year long.
So I don’t need a pixelated cupcake. I don’t need a digital garden. And if I want to play Scrabble, the board’s in the living room. I routinely turn down applications because every application you add gives its developer — a third-party interest that is not Facebook — access to your information. (And as you can see, I’m jittery enough about Facebook having that, amid rumours they’re funded by various military-industrial interests.) Most applications won’t work if you crank up your privacy filter just one notch. My one exception is the book-recommendation app weRead, because I like to promote books and reading. But weRead is now on notice, for sending me its own bogus recommendations (and for trying to convince me that “one of my ‘friends’” has a crush on me).
So that’s my take on the two (or possibly many) faces of Facebook. Feel free to tweak or critique these suggestions with a comment. And don’t forget to go pre-emptively create a profile on the hundred and thirty or so social network sites out there … before the gangsters and terrorists do it for you.
