In between finishing IT Strategy and starting Data Mining I managed to sneak in a book. I picked up the Demonologist at Harvard Bookstore on Tuesday night and finished it on the train into Boston Friday morning. I highly recommend it. It is still in hardcover though.
The book is the story of David Ullman, a tenured professor of literature at Colombia who specializes in Paradise Lost. Ullman is lured to Venice with his daughter where he encounters a demon. The demon steals his daughter (in such a way that it appears to the rest of the world--including Ullman's soon to be ex-wife) that she drowned.
Ullman pursues the demon across America, aided by his best friend Elaine O'Brien and using Paradise Lost as his guide. This isn't a coincidence--the demon makes it clear that his interest in Ullman is due to his professional expertise. Ullman finds himself examining texts that he knows well--this time looking for literal meanings--not figurative ones.
This is plot-driven fiction. I do not recommend it for the beauty of the prose. I do not find the behavior of all of the characters entirely believable--the duct tape that holds the plot together is visible under the velvet drapery. For example Ullman's wife is leaving him, but makes no try to gain custody of their daughter. O'Brien--the female-best-friend-with-whom-the-protagonist-has-never-slept--has bone cancer and only a short while to live when she joins the crusade.
The journeys across country serve no purpose except as a chance for the characters to muse between demonic revelations. They seem to be part of the plot because that's what heros do--go on journeys. The whole story could have remained the bounds of New York City--unless the author chose to have his characters travel because he wished to make some point about the banality of evil--it's not all about heroin addicts in the big city. Maybe he felt that New York City was already too potentially demonic--too like Pandemonium--and that's why he made his characters travel.
In spite of these shortcomings I found it a good read--it made me want to re-read Paradise Lost. Perhaps that's its appeal--it is Paradise Lost lite. There is more to it that that though. It is another attempt to imagine the motivations of fallen angels and, for a change, one shelved outside of the science fiction section. Don't get me wrong--I love sci fi--but it's nice to read something without the snark now and again.
I feel the author could have done more character development of the demons and demonic possession. The protagonist talks a lot about the Bible and Paradise Lost, but to me this book is a descendant of The Exorcist as much as it is of Paradise Lost.
Perhaps grad school is lowering my internal bar--suddenly anything with a better plot than the Mythical Man Month seems like a page turner.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Belated New Year's Resolution
"I don't like food anymore" Strong Sad 2003
A few years ago after my first full year of grad school I was at my sister's and brother in law's Christmas party apologizing to my sister for the fact that I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a few mouthfuls of the excellent spread her husband had cooked. I found myself saying that I found I just didn't like food anymore. "What are you eating?" she asked. I explained that I mostly subsisted on a diet of canned soup and Odwalla bars "Bleck--there's your problem--you're the vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables."
I'm a picky eater. I'm a vegetarian (although since moving to MA I've included fish in my diet) and even though I tended to eat frozen food or canned soup I like to think it was relatively good frozen food and canned soup--there were no ingredients I needed Wikipedia to help me identify and it's all organic--right? To which my sister has always responded that it's still not real food, made from real ingredients.
Cooking meals from real food may be cheaper than nuking an Amy's dinner, but it costs more time--something that is at a bit of a premium for me at the moment. However, my sister has 4 children. While I can certainly argue that she, feeder of six humans, gets a better return on investment for cooking real food, I can hardly argue that it is easier for her to cook real food than it is for me to do so (no one who has spent an hour in the company of her "piggies" will ever argue that it is easier for her to do anything than it is for me to do so.)
Then there was the weekend of Snowpocolypse. I had a paper to write so I went to the Whole Foods by North Station and bought $80 worth of frozen/canned vegetarian food (along with good coffee and iced cookies.) I was not going to have to worry about cooking at all that weekend. Except, by that Sunday I never wanted to eat another frozen whatsit again.
I decided that I was done eating things that came out of cans--this includes beans and tomatoes.
This year my goal is to stop eating canned things (until such time as I take up canning myself) and to eat no more frozen, pre-prepared food.
We'll see how this goes
A few years ago after my first full year of grad school I was at my sister's and brother in law's Christmas party apologizing to my sister for the fact that I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a few mouthfuls of the excellent spread her husband had cooked. I found myself saying that I found I just didn't like food anymore. "What are you eating?" she asked. I explained that I mostly subsisted on a diet of canned soup and Odwalla bars "Bleck--there's your problem--you're the vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables."
I'm a picky eater. I'm a vegetarian (although since moving to MA I've included fish in my diet) and even though I tended to eat frozen food or canned soup I like to think it was relatively good frozen food and canned soup--there were no ingredients I needed Wikipedia to help me identify and it's all organic--right? To which my sister has always responded that it's still not real food, made from real ingredients.
Cooking meals from real food may be cheaper than nuking an Amy's dinner, but it costs more time--something that is at a bit of a premium for me at the moment. However, my sister has 4 children. While I can certainly argue that she, feeder of six humans, gets a better return on investment for cooking real food, I can hardly argue that it is easier for her to cook real food than it is for me to do so (no one who has spent an hour in the company of her "piggies" will ever argue that it is easier for her to do anything than it is for me to do so.)
Then there was the weekend of Snowpocolypse. I had a paper to write so I went to the Whole Foods by North Station and bought $80 worth of frozen/canned vegetarian food (along with good coffee and iced cookies.) I was not going to have to worry about cooking at all that weekend. Except, by that Sunday I never wanted to eat another frozen whatsit again.
I decided that I was done eating things that came out of cans--this includes beans and tomatoes.
This year my goal is to stop eating canned things (until such time as I take up canning myself) and to eat no more frozen, pre-prepared food.
We'll see how this goes
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Graduate School
I have 14 weeks until I'm done with grad school and they give me a degree! I am so relieved/ impressed with myself that I considered attending commencement. I feel like completing a graduate degree is an accomplishment where as--in my case anyways--completing an undergraduate degree was par for the course*. I got an eviction notice written in Latin and I would have skipped commencement but my parents insisted I attend-"We paid for this--you will walk" said my mom.
I would not trade my undergraduate education for anything (although I might have, in hind sight, done a few things differently) I met some awesome people--including my best friend--at Carleton and studied (or at least pretended to study) a whole bunch of interesting stuff. I was disconsolate when they kicked me out.
My graduate education is another matter. Grad school is fun! You get to learn about all sorts of interesting things--like DNS poisoning or how DHCP really works. You get to meet people who are interested in the same weird things that interest you. Why would you want to spend your Saturday nights drinking beer and watching movies about Moon Nazis with your friends when you can spend them talking to your study buddies about the paper you have to write?
I can't wait to be done with graduate school. But I feel good about having done it. It was't any fun spending July 4th last year trying to understand two's complement or reading the RFC that describes SMTP. These things were hard in a way that getting an undergraduate degree in French literature was not. In grad school almost every final paper I turned in scared me--I think I understood the concepts but what if I guessed wrong? Aside from working full time the whole thing was hard in a way that college wasn't. Some of this may be because my brain is older. Some of this may be because I'm working full time. I suspect some of it is because I'm making myself learn things that don't come easily to me.
Not all of it is an uphill battle or I'd have given up. And some parts of the whole thing fell into place as easily and obviously as some of my undergraduate analyses of good literature. This is not to be discounted or overlooked--the joy of discovering that something you find fascinating comes naturally to you is wonderful.
All of it (or almost all of it) falls into the category of "Stuff I want to know" but without grad school to goad me I wouldn't have bothered to *really* learn the history of Flame or consider the difficulties of storing and manipulating very large numbers that must be very,very accurate.
Getting a degree will mean that someone thinks I've understood even the difficult concepts well enough to be validated.
*I recognize that this is because I'm from a middle class background and my parents could afford to send me to college.
I would not trade my undergraduate education for anything (although I might have, in hind sight, done a few things differently) I met some awesome people--including my best friend--at Carleton and studied (or at least pretended to study) a whole bunch of interesting stuff. I was disconsolate when they kicked me out.
My graduate education is another matter. Grad school is fun! You get to learn about all sorts of interesting things--like DNS poisoning or how DHCP really works. You get to meet people who are interested in the same weird things that interest you. Why would you want to spend your Saturday nights drinking beer and watching movies about Moon Nazis with your friends when you can spend them talking to your study buddies about the paper you have to write?
I can't wait to be done with graduate school. But I feel good about having done it. It was't any fun spending July 4th last year trying to understand two's complement or reading the RFC that describes SMTP. These things were hard in a way that getting an undergraduate degree in French literature was not. In grad school almost every final paper I turned in scared me--I think I understood the concepts but what if I guessed wrong? Aside from working full time the whole thing was hard in a way that college wasn't. Some of this may be because my brain is older. Some of this may be because I'm working full time. I suspect some of it is because I'm making myself learn things that don't come easily to me.
Not all of it is an uphill battle or I'd have given up. And some parts of the whole thing fell into place as easily and obviously as some of my undergraduate analyses of good literature. This is not to be discounted or overlooked--the joy of discovering that something you find fascinating comes naturally to you is wonderful.
All of it (or almost all of it) falls into the category of "Stuff I want to know" but without grad school to goad me I wouldn't have bothered to *really* learn the history of Flame or consider the difficulties of storing and manipulating very large numbers that must be very,very accurate.
Getting a degree will mean that someone thinks I've understood even the difficult concepts well enough to be validated.
*I recognize that this is because I'm from a middle class background and my parents could afford to send me to college.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Entomology
This is about work--but it's mostly about me so I think it's okay to post about this. I feel like I've gone through a bit of a professional growth spurt lately. I put this mostly down to the fact that I'm almost a year into my MSIT program--in three more courses they give me a degree.
I do things I wouldn't have had the confidence to do a year ago (although some of these are things I was perfectly capable of doing). I find I don't always have to check with the outsourced IT firm before answering questions about why this e-mail message wasn't delivered or why So-and-So got a funny message the first time they opened Worldox today. This is a good change for the most part (assuming I don't get cocky and break something) but "in literature as in life" change can be scary--even good change.
I started noticing this last week when I was sending an e-mail out to the entire staff about changes I'd made to our document management system. "I have made a few changes to Worldox's file-attachment functionality" was the first sentence. I was a little appalled that I had used the word "functionality" in a written sentence. I've always hated this word and I refused to use it for a long time* but I needed to send this e-mail notification out yesterday so...functionality it was. Luckily I usually ask a colleague to proofread memos before sending them out to the whole staff. The colleague in question rolled his eyes at functionality "Yeah I know--I hate the word but.."
"Use 'feature'," he suggested. I did. My inner-French Major/Dickens Reader sighed with relief.
Today had to log in as a user for whom the CRM kept crashing and see if I could reproduce the crash. I did. I was alarmed at how satisfied I was when I succeeded in reproducing the crash and at how I could tell that this was the same error code the user had gotten. I've become a connoisseur of Microsoft Dynamics bugs.
I am not complaining about being deeply satisfied for something that someone paid me to do--it's just that I'm not yet comfortable with my new self--I never actually expected to use the phrase "escape sequence" in a sentence (at least not outside of a classroom.) Some of my apprehension is that I worry that some of this is just too far out of the acceptable range of dorkiness--that my new knowledge has pushed me farther along the NGLA spectrum. I know my Beverly pack mates (and most of the other humans I know) are not going to want to hear about Dynamics bugs or e-mail spoofing** over Saturday brunch. The things I spend time working on have passed out of the range of "stuff I really think everyone aught to know about computers/be able to do for themselves" to the kind of things that don't work well on t-shirts. That's okay. I have my MSIT study buddies and a few nerd friends who tell SQL jokes.
Whenever I started a new romantic relationship, or even fell in love with a band I'd have a period of uncertainty at the beginning (no matter how nuts I had been about the person/band) where I asked myself--"Is this really what you want?" I figure that's what I'm currently feeling about my new, nerdier, self.
*I remember discussing our mutual hatred for this word with a colleague of mine at the tech startup where I worked in 2000. We both agreed that it was a terrible letter-salad and we were discussing whether it was grammatically correct. At the time I opined that it would fade out of usage soon. Hah!
**I was disappointed this wasn't more of a winner--I remember being awed the first time someone showed me how to do this.
I do things I wouldn't have had the confidence to do a year ago (although some of these are things I was perfectly capable of doing). I find I don't always have to check with the outsourced IT firm before answering questions about why this e-mail message wasn't delivered or why So-and-So got a funny message the first time they opened Worldox today. This is a good change for the most part (assuming I don't get cocky and break something) but "in literature as in life" change can be scary--even good change.
I started noticing this last week when I was sending an e-mail out to the entire staff about changes I'd made to our document management system. "I have made a few changes to Worldox's file-attachment functionality" was the first sentence. I was a little appalled that I had used the word "functionality" in a written sentence. I've always hated this word and I refused to use it for a long time* but I needed to send this e-mail notification out yesterday so...functionality it was. Luckily I usually ask a colleague to proofread memos before sending them out to the whole staff. The colleague in question rolled his eyes at functionality "Yeah I know--I hate the word but.."
"Use 'feature'," he suggested. I did. My inner-French Major/Dickens Reader sighed with relief.
Today had to log in as a user for whom the CRM kept crashing and see if I could reproduce the crash. I did. I was alarmed at how satisfied I was when I succeeded in reproducing the crash and at how I could tell that this was the same error code the user had gotten. I've become a connoisseur of Microsoft Dynamics bugs.
I am not complaining about being deeply satisfied for something that someone paid me to do--it's just that I'm not yet comfortable with my new self--I never actually expected to use the phrase "escape sequence" in a sentence (at least not outside of a classroom.) Some of my apprehension is that I worry that some of this is just too far out of the acceptable range of dorkiness--that my new knowledge has pushed me farther along the NGLA spectrum. I know my Beverly pack mates (and most of the other humans I know) are not going to want to hear about Dynamics bugs or e-mail spoofing** over Saturday brunch. The things I spend time working on have passed out of the range of "stuff I really think everyone aught to know about computers/be able to do for themselves" to the kind of things that don't work well on t-shirts. That's okay. I have my MSIT study buddies and a few nerd friends who tell SQL jokes.
Whenever I started a new romantic relationship, or even fell in love with a band I'd have a period of uncertainty at the beginning (no matter how nuts I had been about the person/band) where I asked myself--"Is this really what you want?" I figure that's what I'm currently feeling about my new, nerdier, self.
*I remember discussing our mutual hatred for this word with a colleague of mine at the tech startup where I worked in 2000. We both agreed that it was a terrible letter-salad and we were discussing whether it was grammatically correct. At the time I opined that it would fade out of usage soon. Hah!
**I was disappointed this wasn't more of a winner--I remember being awed the first time someone showed me how to do this.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Ten Years Ago This Weekend..
On Friday I was shocked when I saw the 2003 protest against the Iraq war listed on Wikipedia's "On This Day" area of the page. Holy sh!t! It's been ten years since then. Time flys-whether you are having fun or not.
I don't remember who's idea it was to go down to the protest in New York City that weekend--if I had to guess I would have said it was Dan's idea. We had all gone to several protests in Boston. I even went to one march by myself on a Sunday. (Most of the people I encountered at that march were sanctimonious prigs.)
We must have rented a car because I know we didn't take Adam's ailing BMW 2002 down to New York. Adam and his girlfriend Stephanie and Sean and I drove down to my parents' house on Staten Island on Friday night 2/14/03. While on the BQE with Sean driving Adam ( a native of the Bay State) yelled "Don't signal! that will let them know what you're doing!"*
My dad was in Idaho visiting his mother because she was ill, but my mom was home. The front door was supposed to be unlocked, but it wasn't. I called from my cell phone and woke Mom up. She came down to let us in to the house in a robe and then went back upstairs to have a sleep emergency. It reminded me of how Mom's mother--my grandma--would always come downstairs in her nightgown whenever we arrived at her house in Beverly.
Mom had prepared a vegetarian chili for us and left it (in a microwave safe container) in the refrigerator along with some beer. I was happy to have my friends down at my parents' place to show it to them and shown them to my mom (see Mom--my friends aren't imaginary!)
I had been a little worried what my parents would think of the idea of the protest. They had lived in the village in the 1960s and (as far as I could tell) still seemed to have missed most of the cool parts of it. They didn't seem to think highly of the anti-war movement (although they were anti-Vietnam war). Dad had gone to one anti war meeting at NYU and had come away unimpressed--"They kept talking about The Movement. It sounded like they all had trouble with their bowels."
So I was pleasantly surprised to find that that not only did they approve of the protest, Mom would be going with some people from her church. Perhaps we could all meet up at the rally? The city of New York had vetoed the idea of a march in front of the UN. Instead there was a park where we could hold a stationary rally. We were going to meet our friend Dan at the rally as well. He'd also come down from Boston but he'd stayed with his brother Friday night.
On Saturday 2/15/3 Mom went in to town earlier than we did. It was Cold that day. Luckily Adam and Sean worked at Hilton's Tent City. They had brought hand warmers for us. We all had ENEMY t-shirts, but you couldn't have seen them without an X ray. I made the error of wearing just my t-shirt beneath my wind-stopper fleece and hard shell. This was not nearly enough coat and I spent the entire afternoon realizing this.
We took the ferry and the subway up to near the rally site. So did everyone else in the NY, NJ CT area. By the time we got off the train we were in a huge crush--everyone was headed towards the rally point, but there were so many of us we became a march (a very slow one) whether the City wanted it or not. We tried to stay on the sidewalks but there were just too many people. We never did find Mom. Somehow we found Dan. None of us had smartphones with Google Maps (because this was 2003!) and this was a part of New York City I didn't know well, but it didn't really matter because there were so many people that no one was moving quickly, and we were all going the same way whether we liked it or not. We passed a deli where Dan had once worked. I think we passed the Roosevelt Island Tram, but I don't remember for sure. The police were around but everyone was behaving well** People were drumming and chanting "This is what democracy looks like!" They got fire trucks to go down the avenue blocks with their lights and sirens on. People yelled at the firetrucks to stop doing the cops bidding.
We never made it to the "rally" but that didn't matter. The rally was too big to fit in the park and spilled out all over Manhattan.
Eventually we got cold and hungry and went to a bar to eat dinner. We were supposed to meet up with Dan's brother and my sister (because they both lived in New York City.) I think we got Dan's brother but not my sister (she was working at the Strand that night.) We hit multiple bars. One of them had a juke box and Adam and Stephanie danced. I watched them feeling happy and sad. Sean didn't like to dance and so I'd occasionally danced with Adam, but now Adam had a girlfriend and so I'd lost my dance partner.
I was thrilled to be out so late because we were in a city with all night public transit. Somehow we all--Adam, Stephanie Sean Dan and I made it back to my parents' place on Staten Island and we all went to bed. Adam and Stephanie got the attic, I got my childhood bed, Sean got the bed in my sister's room (we referred to it as "The Slab" because it was like a marble mattress) and Dan got the couch in my parents living room.
The next day Adam and Stephanie went to Brooklyn to see friends of hers. Sean, Dan and I met them at the Brooklyn museum later and then we all went for dinner before driving back to Cambridge. At dinner my Mom called and told us to come back to SI. There was a snow storm coming and she didn't want us driving in it. We decided to go home anyways--we had to work the next day.
I'm sure there are plenty of parts I've forgotten and some I've mis-remembered. The part I remember the best is how very cold I was. I don't think I've been as cold since. It was still a good weekend and I can't believe it was 10 years ago.
Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest
*I have since heard other Bay State natives say this. I have yet to figure out why you wouldn't want your fellow drivers know that you were changing lanes.
** As far as we could tell at the time the protest was entirely peaceful. When I went to go buy bagels the next morning I noted that the New York Post had a picture of a cop on a horse with a protester in what *might* have been construed as a violent confrontation. The headline was "FACE OFF." The Post has never been noted for it's liberalism.
I don't remember who's idea it was to go down to the protest in New York City that weekend--if I had to guess I would have said it was Dan's idea. We had all gone to several protests in Boston. I even went to one march by myself on a Sunday. (Most of the people I encountered at that march were sanctimonious prigs.)
We must have rented a car because I know we didn't take Adam's ailing BMW 2002 down to New York. Adam and his girlfriend Stephanie and Sean and I drove down to my parents' house on Staten Island on Friday night 2/14/03. While on the BQE with Sean driving Adam ( a native of the Bay State) yelled "Don't signal! that will let them know what you're doing!"*
My dad was in Idaho visiting his mother because she was ill, but my mom was home. The front door was supposed to be unlocked, but it wasn't. I called from my cell phone and woke Mom up. She came down to let us in to the house in a robe and then went back upstairs to have a sleep emergency. It reminded me of how Mom's mother--my grandma--would always come downstairs in her nightgown whenever we arrived at her house in Beverly.
Mom had prepared a vegetarian chili for us and left it (in a microwave safe container) in the refrigerator along with some beer. I was happy to have my friends down at my parents' place to show it to them and shown them to my mom (see Mom--my friends aren't imaginary!)
I had been a little worried what my parents would think of the idea of the protest. They had lived in the village in the 1960s and (as far as I could tell) still seemed to have missed most of the cool parts of it. They didn't seem to think highly of the anti-war movement (although they were anti-Vietnam war). Dad had gone to one anti war meeting at NYU and had come away unimpressed--"They kept talking about The Movement. It sounded like they all had trouble with their bowels."
So I was pleasantly surprised to find that that not only did they approve of the protest, Mom would be going with some people from her church. Perhaps we could all meet up at the rally? The city of New York had vetoed the idea of a march in front of the UN. Instead there was a park where we could hold a stationary rally. We were going to meet our friend Dan at the rally as well. He'd also come down from Boston but he'd stayed with his brother Friday night.
On Saturday 2/15/3 Mom went in to town earlier than we did. It was Cold that day. Luckily Adam and Sean worked at Hilton's Tent City. They had brought hand warmers for us. We all had ENEMY t-shirts, but you couldn't have seen them without an X ray. I made the error of wearing just my t-shirt beneath my wind-stopper fleece and hard shell. This was not nearly enough coat and I spent the entire afternoon realizing this.
We took the ferry and the subway up to near the rally site. So did everyone else in the NY, NJ CT area. By the time we got off the train we were in a huge crush--everyone was headed towards the rally point, but there were so many of us we became a march (a very slow one) whether the City wanted it or not. We tried to stay on the sidewalks but there were just too many people. We never did find Mom. Somehow we found Dan. None of us had smartphones with Google Maps (because this was 2003!) and this was a part of New York City I didn't know well, but it didn't really matter because there were so many people that no one was moving quickly, and we were all going the same way whether we liked it or not. We passed a deli where Dan had once worked. I think we passed the Roosevelt Island Tram, but I don't remember for sure. The police were around but everyone was behaving well** People were drumming and chanting "This is what democracy looks like!" They got fire trucks to go down the avenue blocks with their lights and sirens on. People yelled at the firetrucks to stop doing the cops bidding.
We never made it to the "rally" but that didn't matter. The rally was too big to fit in the park and spilled out all over Manhattan.
Eventually we got cold and hungry and went to a bar to eat dinner. We were supposed to meet up with Dan's brother and my sister (because they both lived in New York City.) I think we got Dan's brother but not my sister (she was working at the Strand that night.) We hit multiple bars. One of them had a juke box and Adam and Stephanie danced. I watched them feeling happy and sad. Sean didn't like to dance and so I'd occasionally danced with Adam, but now Adam had a girlfriend and so I'd lost my dance partner.
I was thrilled to be out so late because we were in a city with all night public transit. Somehow we all--Adam, Stephanie Sean Dan and I made it back to my parents' place on Staten Island and we all went to bed. Adam and Stephanie got the attic, I got my childhood bed, Sean got the bed in my sister's room (we referred to it as "The Slab" because it was like a marble mattress) and Dan got the couch in my parents living room.
The next day Adam and Stephanie went to Brooklyn to see friends of hers. Sean, Dan and I met them at the Brooklyn museum later and then we all went for dinner before driving back to Cambridge. At dinner my Mom called and told us to come back to SI. There was a snow storm coming and she didn't want us driving in it. We decided to go home anyways--we had to work the next day.
I'm sure there are plenty of parts I've forgotten and some I've mis-remembered. The part I remember the best is how very cold I was. I don't think I've been as cold since. It was still a good weekend and I can't believe it was 10 years ago.
Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest
*I have since heard other Bay State natives say this. I have yet to figure out why you wouldn't want your fellow drivers know that you were changing lanes.
** As far as we could tell at the time the protest was entirely peaceful. When I went to go buy bagels the next morning I noted that the New York Post had a picture of a cop on a horse with a protester in what *might* have been construed as a violent confrontation. The headline was "FACE OFF." The Post has never been noted for it's liberalism.
Friday, February 15, 2013
I Fought the Law...
This post is as much to bookmark videos as anything else. I love the Clash and I love I Fought The Law. I like the Clash's version, but I also think Green Day brought something to the song.
Here's the Clash's version--which I thought was the original.
Here's the Clash's version--which I thought was the original.
It's good--it has a certain anger that's missing from Green Day's version. Perhaps it's just part of their schtick but they don't flirt with the audience. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones just throw this song out there as hard as they can. It's part of why I like them (and punk in general--but that's another blog post).
On the other hand I like about this later, American rendition. While I like Joe Strummer's version this has more showmanship. As mentioned above I think there's more anger (and with it more honesty) in the Clash's version. The Green Day version has a certain.. goofiness to it that I see as an element of American punk that is missing from the Clash or the Sex Pistols. The Ramones had it too--it's bratty instead of angry. (Not that I'm dismissing this--I love the Ramones.) Billy Joe is playing with his mouth open and rolling his head as if he doesn't really care but the moment he stops playing and claps--once--the audience picks up and starts clapping.
One of the things I like about early punk is how it sounds like 50's and 60's rock and roll--but faster and without the bubble gum and marzipan--not that there's anything wrong with that.
Which brings me to Bobby Fuller. I was screwing around with YouTube last December--probably avoiding a paper--when I came across Bobby Fuller's version of I Fought The Law--from 1965.I was mesmerized. I'm still not sure why. It was the day after the shootings in Connecticut--I posted the video to Facebook and then remembered that people might not think the guns were so cute that day.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine over breakfast that day "You thought the Clash wrote 'I Fought the Law?'" said my buddy. "No that's an old time folk meme." It might be--I couldn't find any info about that in the Wikipedia article. The original sounds like it was written by Buddy Holly--which makes sense as it was written by another Cricket--Sonny Curtis (who replaced Buddy Holly after he died.)
I found another video version without the guns in the background. As I mentioned above I'm still not quite sure what about this song sends me to my happy place. Some of it could be because I love rock and roll from 1965--I like Help and Rubber Soul more than I like the White Album. Some of it could be just the novelty of guys in suits and ties singing a song that I usually associate with sweaty guys in eye makeup and studded belts. I think some of my fascination is because I look at this video--at all of the teenage boys in suits and teenage girls in dresses with flip hair dos--and think "Your world is about to change."
But Bobby Fuller never made the change. Six months after the I Fought the Law made the Billboard top 100 list he was found dead in a car under mysterious circumstances.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Terrible Poetry
Today is Valentine's Day.
Today I had to give a MS Dynamics training session.
So my gift to me is some terrible Dynamics/Tech Support/V Day themed verses*:
Roses are red
Violets are purple
For a change of address
Please launch this Workflow
Flowers smell pretty
New leaves are green
If you see this error message
E-mail me a PrintScreen
Chocolate is yummy
Love stories need tension
If you can't find the "Any" key
Call my extension
*I try not to talk about work on this blog but this is generic enough that I give myself a pass--as a Valentine's Day treat. Also--given what I've done on the other V days post-liberation in 2009 (written a paper, submitted a report to the SEC, done Statistics homework) count yourselves lucky this is the first time I felt poetic.
Today I had to give a MS Dynamics training session.
So my gift to me is some terrible Dynamics/Tech Support/V Day themed verses*:
Roses are red
Violets are purple
For a change of address
Please launch this Workflow
Flowers smell pretty
New leaves are green
If you see this error message
E-mail me a PrintScreen
Love stories need tension
If you can't find the "Any" key
Call my extension
*I try not to talk about work on this blog but this is generic enough that I give myself a pass--as a Valentine's Day treat. Also--given what I've done on the other V days post-liberation in 2009 (written a paper, submitted a report to the SEC, done Statistics homework) count yourselves lucky this is the first time I felt poetic.
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