Notes on Notes.

Oh I've neglected you, blog and readers, and I apologize for that. But I shan't waste our time moaning about my hectic schedule, but rather will return to you as if I had never left.

Back in May, my housemate Will and I twice performed a very cool piece of music - "Piano Phase", by Steve Reich. "Piano Phase" is a landmark of minimalist music (composed in 1967), involving one piano part phasing against another, an effect Reich adapted from his experiments with phasing tape loops.

Well, you might as well just listen to the explanation we gave the first night we performed it. This recording is 21 minutes long in all, including the 1m30s of introduction. It was quite the thrill to perform, and quite the test of concentration. (Below is my transcription of the piece, which I did mainly to get around paying $15 for it online. Follow along, if you like – you can click on the scores to see larger versions.)

download (option-click for Mac users, right-click and save for PC users)

Recorded on May 1st, 2009, at The Little Church, in Portland, OR.

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My kind of humor.

My wife! My Family!

(via Tofutti Break)

Scraps.

It's time for another episode of "Things I jotted down and lost on my desktop". This time desktop means computer desktop. In a text file that's been sitting open on my computer for months, these words appear:

Canadian bowling
death midwife
albino body parts racket

dreams:
death threats - stolen computer - karoake threat - detective

I happen to remember typing this, actually, and I can tell you that the first three lines are real things that I had recently read about. When did real life become more interesting than my dreams?

Sound on fire!

Mythbusters is an awesome television show. For all the scripted spontaneity and hackneyed editing, the two hosts Adam and Jamie are at their cores wonderfully curious and delighted by the natural world. Here's a clip from online (that didn't make it to air) that I just found today. It introduced me to a Ruben's Tube, which is a super cool visual representation of a sound wave, using FIRE!! I hope you get a kick out of this:

A tourniquet.

I've listened to this about five times in a row now, and while it hasn't made me feel any better, I sure don't feel any worse.

"Sweet and Lovely", performed by George Shearing


Bless you, iTunes, for finding me the right song to brood to.

This is insanely awesome.

(via http://cuteoverload.com/2009/06/05/look-up-in-the-sky/)

Quiet genius.

I have the HUGEST crush on the girl in this video.

Milestone!

I'm kind of surprised, actually, that I achieved this so soon: I sold my first CD online to a stranger today! Actually, two of them – two CD's, that is – he bought a copy of each of my improv CD's. His name is Ernst Gruenfeldt*, and he lives in Frankfurt, Germany†! No word on how he came to find my music or why he bought it, but I hope to find out, and I will let you know when I do.

* Name changed to protect his/her privacy.
† Place NOT changed, mofos! He/she really lives in Germany!

Economic stimulus.

For once in my life, I filed my taxes well in advance of the deadline, and today I received my deservèd refund. With my check from the federal government came a small piece of paper from the SEC titled "Check Out These Saving and Investing Tips". Here are the tips:

1. Pay off credit card or high-interest debt.
2. Boost your emergency fund.
3. Beware of promises of "guaranteed returns."
4. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

What helpful advice, SEC! I will be sure to take my $17 refund check and put it to good use, paying off $11 dollars of my credit card debt, and depositing the remaining $6 into my savings account. I probably should spread it around a bit more (see tip #4), but when you only have two eggs, it's hard to to put them in more than two baskets!

Spring cleaning.

I've been cleaning out my computer recently. (It is a LENGTHY CHORE.) Tonight I came across a text file, created last October 11th, marked "notes" – I'll admit that I've stumped myself. I've no idea what the hell I was thinking about. Would you like to read it?

Don't worry: they were French cows – you've never met them.

cornflakes
omelet
french toast
smoothie
german toast
oatmeal
banana

a turkey sandwich
a tunafish sandwich
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
a tempeh, lettuce, & tomato sandwich
an eggplant sandwich

pizza
taco
soup
pork chop

I mean, it's clearly lists of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I have had a run-in with French cows. But why does this file exist? I am a complex person, that is for sure.

Miscellany.

1. Chinese people discovering fortune cookies:





2. The monetary density of things:  

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/density



3. Mushrooms on speed:

Lifestyle choices.

It occurred to me this morning that being a vegetarian is kind of like growing a beard. If you give up on it every few days and shave again, you don't have a beard. You have to really commit to it. It's especially difficult, however, when your facial hair grows as slowly and sparsely as mine. For those first weeks or months, you're not shaving, but you don't have a beard yet. I keep telling myself that this is the time when I'll make all the way to beard stage, but it never happens. It just takes too darn long. So I guess that's why I'm not a vegetarian?

If I could eat something that made my face hair come in thicker and faster, I would eat it instead of meat. That would solve both my problems.

Warm Happy Feelings.

Okay, my friends and family. This video may be old news to you. After all, it has been viewed over 40 million times on YouTube. But it is new to me. A friend told me to watch it, saying it was amazing. I thought, "okay, amazing animals, great, whatever." But I watched it, and it was AMAZING. Do watch it all the way through – Hollywood could not have scripted a more wonderful 8-minute drama.

Options.

I'm thinking about getting contact lenses, but still wearing (empty) glasses frames as a fashion accessory. Please help me understand why this is a bad idea.

In this Linten season...

I just emptied my pants pockets of all items, including all accumulated lint. There was a half-fingernail size clump of blueish-white lint in my right pants pocket, and SIX SQUARE INCHES of whitish-white lint in my left pants pocket. What a discrepancy!

Rockin' a new look, part one.

A singsong delivery.

I love these videos. They are playful and silly and surreal and virtuosic, and political and apolitical. Henry Hey is the pianist's name:

Don LaFontaine will make you cool.

Eye laughter.

I want to share with you two of my favorite visual humorists, Graham Roumieu and Nicholas Gurewitch. If you don't laugh at either of these, well, you can still be my friend. But seriously, these things are what make me laugh.

Graham Roumieu

Nicholas Gurewitch

My name in lights, so to speak.

Needless to say, I think that this is very cool.

New blog address!

I said I'd do it, and so I'm gonna do it. I'm changing blog addresses. This post will be the last at the old blog address, and should show up in your RSS reader, or however you read this thing. Then I'll switch over. You may have to do something to your RSS reader, or however you read this thing – I'm not sure. All my old posts will still exist, so you can return to such classics as "Regimonts" or "First encounters with the niece".

The new address of this blog, starting in about two minutes, will be kittensornails.blogspot.com...

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN, CHRIS?!!

I'm glad you asked. I'd always heard (from no one in particular) that you should never drive over cardboard boxes in the middle of the road.

WHY NOT, CHRIS?

Because there could be kittens or nails in them.

I have never found anyone who has heard this advice. But I think it's good advice, and also a good representation of the unknown in life. Could be good or bad. Though running over either of those things would be bad. But in very different ways. Anyway, that's what the new blog is called. Kittens or Nails. GET USED TO IT!

Love,
Chris

New address.

Hey friends,

In a few days, I am going to change the URL of this blog from [redacted].blogspot.com to something less self-incriminating. I'm taking suggestions. What URL would you like to go to instead? Vulgar suggestions will be appreciated, but probably not taken.

Chris

Superheroes.

I am reading an article (on RollingStone.com) about real-life superheroes, and it's just about blowing my mind. I think it works well as a companion piece to two other articles that I blogged about here.

Here's a quote, from the main superhero of the article, Master Legend, talking about how he is soon to be evicted because of an eminent domain claim:

"I'd rather face a dozen men with chains in an alley than deal with the bureaucracy of the state of Florida... I want to be out there taking care of criminals, not packing my stuff in boxes."

Isn't that fantastic? Here's the link to the story: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/25020634/the_legend_of_master_legend

(A tip of the hat to BoingBoing.net for bringing this to my attention.)

2009 early review.