blogs

Last week I was browsing allmusic.com for album covers in an anal retentive attempt to keep my iTunes music collection organized. The associated artists section for Blackalicious referenced an MC called Lyrics Born, so I got a copy of the album (Later That Day...).

I've been rocking it multiply ever since. Get yours now.

A long time ago, in high school, I came across this clip of a portion of Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven playing backwards. The story, as Metal? tells it, begins with a broken walkman. The walkman had been dropped at some point, and the gears inside the player becames misaligned. When you put in a tape, and tried to play Side A, you'd instead hear Side B playing backwards. At some point, Metal had the idea to listen to Stairway to Heaven backwards and listen for the satanic messages that it was rumored to contain. During the portion of the song where Robert Plant should have been singing "There's still time to change the road you're on," he heard instead, "Here's to my sweet satan" in a distorted, but eerily sing-song voice.

I've posted some of the better photos from my trip through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru this summer. Unfortunately, a lot of my pictures from the first few weeks in Medellin are still on Charles' computer. Spy them here.

Imagine that everything in Chicago has disappeared. Every last building, street, and can of Old Style is gone. Every square inch of soil within the Chicago city limits is completely empty. The only thing that exists between the suburbs and Lake Michigan is a vast expanse of flat earth. Now imagine that one thing was left behind. One single category of thing was left behind, in the same place as it was before everything else disappeared, but fallen to the ground.

I came up with this idea while flying into O'Hare airport at night and looking at all the cars moving around on the highways below. It's fascinating to see in ordinary things from an extraordinary perspective, because patterns that would have been obscured at close range become obvious. You can see the way that cars on highways move in packs. You can see the regularity of the lights in the residential areas in contrast to the more industrial neighborhoods. You can see the brightest lights of the commercial areas along the major streets: east-west, north-south, and diagonal. I thought it would be interesting to see the patterns of other things throughout the city.

Business people spend so much time going to meetings, they don't even realize that they're not getting anything done.

excuse me, do you live around here?

yeah, i live nearby.

do you happen to know anyone from yugoslavia?

no.. no, i'm sorry i don't.

... why are you so eager to find someone from Yugoslavia?

well, i'm stranded. and i know that someone from yugoslavia will help me. no one will help me.

..i'm sorry, i don't know anyone.

...excuse me, can i ask one more question?

...

do you think you could help me? i need to get back to manchester. i need 9 pounds for the coach to manchester. this is the second time this has happened to me... they pulled a knife and took my mobile and my money. i came to visit a friend and i can't get home again.

This article talks about a book called A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. It sounds interesting,... the article describes the concept of a "veil of ignorance" where we (as humanity) come together in a room, knowing nothing about ourselves, our race, our gender, our social position, etc. and we're faced with the task of coming up with a system of rules by which to live.

The idea is that we'd probably be inclined to be as fair as possible... I'll look that book up one of these days. (I

If you're not on your way to becoming a veterinarian in 6 weeks, you'll be dead.

the cops always have something witty to say when arresting hookers

this one may even have some grounding in reality. i suspect hooker jokes are pretty popular at cop parties. but, then again, almost everything i "know" about cops, i learned from the boob tube. i wonder how much of my knowledge is based on such tenuous sources?