Month: January 2009

Music

Musical Interlude

Shelly


Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine

This song was in heavy rotation on MTV and radio during the summer I lived in Bloomington in the early 90s. For some reason, this, and not one of the hundred other songs that were out at the time, is my Bloomington song[1]. So I get it stuck in my head at odd times. I don’t know what, exactly, invokes it, but I spend an awful lot of time with this song bouncing around in my head. This morning, it showed up while I was walking across the Target parking lot.

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1. Seriously. Why? I played the hell out of Little Earthquakes that summer. The same for REM’s Out of Time and Nirvana’s Nevermind, but I don’t associate any of those with this place. Weird.

Crankypantsing

Hmmm.

Shelly

I think my computer overheard me talking about Operation Cracktop, because ever since then, it’s been randomly crashing. This is not good! I don’t know if my hard drive is going out or if my RAM (which I already know is wonky) is getting even wonkier. My plan is to give this machine to my mom when I’m done with it. I’m hoping that replacing (and upgrading) the RAM and installing a new hard drive, as well as reinstalling a clean copy of XP, will fix whatever is wrong with it. I’m not about to start on that project, though, until I have Mr. Cracktop in my greedy little hands and have got him properly set up.

Hrmf.

The other thing that has occurred to me is that the problem may be with Windows Media Player. I don’t use it for anything, but the crashes have all happened when other programs were/could have been interacting with it. It first happened when I was trying to use Amazon’s music downloader, which I know uses WMP. Then, it happened while trying to use QuickTime (which I loathe, so uninstalled, hoping that would solve the problem, but alas, no).

Thinking back, though, the problem started after installing QuickTime, so I have a feeling that’s the culprit, and that it’s overstepped its bounds and corrupted something that WMP required. I ran into the same problem with iTunes a few years ago, and ended up having to uninstall a bunch of programs, uninstall iTunes, then reinstall the affected programs again. Apple knew there was a problem with that release of iTunes, but did not fix it until 2-3 iterations later. Bastards. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar problem was going on with QuickTime.

Uncategorized

More Lost

Shelly

I can’t believe I was able to stay awake through the end of Lost. I was worried that I’d get tired half-way through and fall asleep, but the two-hour episode seemed to last about 20 minutes. (Kind of appropriate, given the subject matter.)

Anyway, I adores me some Hurley, now more than ever. I laughed out loud when he told Sayid, “Maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.” Yeah, what he said. And when Hurley was telling his mom what really happened, and you could see him begin to realize just how crazy it all sounded, but he kept going anyway. And his mom told him she believed him. Didn’t understand him, but believed him. That’s some damnfinegood teevee right there.

A lot happened in this episode, which is to be expected. I may have to watch it again online.

Alsotoo, because I was up so late, I’m dragging my ass this morning. I had to go get a caffeinated, carbonated beverage, and while I was in the lounge, I got a couple photos of another beautiful sunrise. Not as crazy as yesterday’s, but very pretty.

News & Politics

Values

Shelly

From My Way News, in an AP article on Bush’s return to Texas:

It’s a special day, but it’s a sad day, said Dudley Winn, a cotton farmer who drove two hours from Lubbock to greet Bush. He did the job we asked him to do. He kept our values safe.

Um. I’m pretty sure that I am the only one responsible for the upkeep of my values, thankyewverymuch. If you entrust someone else to care for your values, you’ve got some serious, serious problems. Alsotoo, you probably get exactly what you deserve.

News & Politics

O frabjous day!

Shelly

Today is the big day. George Bush II is now unemployed (and one would hope, unemployable), and in just a couple of hours, Barak Obama will be sworn in as our new president.

I had considered staying home and watching the inauguration, but I think I’ll just try to find a stream to listen to while I’m at work. I don’t feel guilty about it, because they’re showing it on TV in one of the large conference rooms, and I would bet real, live money that none of the people who go to watch it will take personal time to do so. At least I’ll be working while I listen.

Art

Food for Thought

Shelly

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world–equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being–simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories or songs or images.
— Dana Gioia, National Endowment for the Arts Chair during Stanford University commencement address

I ran across this quote in a discussion of government sponsorship for the arts and thought it was nice and concise.

I also really like what Leo Tolstoy had to say about the necessity of art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movement, line, color, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others experience the same feeling–this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them.

And then George Kubler, in The Shape of Time, points out we need to study form (science) every bit as much as we need to study function (art history).

Archaeological studies and the history of science are concerned with things only as technical products, while art history has been reduced to a discussion of the meaning of things without much attention to their technical and formal organization. The task of the present generation is to construct a history of things that will do justice both to meaning and being . . . expression and form are equivalent challenges to the historian; and that to neglect either meaning or being, either essence or existence, deforms our comprehension of both.

What all that gets at is the fact that art is necessary to human existence. It’s a primal form of communication. Art is neither form nor function, but a synthesis of both, and we need art in order to explain and explore our existence. Art is every bit as important as science and technology.