Bird's Eye View

A friend posted some pictures of me/my hands over at bird's eye view. Go and see her lovely photos.
In other news, I hope to sleep through the night tonight. It's my major goal for the day.

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Comment comments. The Meta-Comment

I don't know what the etiquette is in the world at large about leaving comments on blog posts, but maybe it's time for me to throw in my two cents. Maybe I've done this in the past? I can't remember.
Rule 1: Leave your name. If you don't know me, and you're going to comment about my writing, let me know who you are. Often I get anonymous comments, and I can guess who sent it, but usually I have no idea. It's hard to take something seriously (or jokingly, or whatever) if it could have been written by a robot for all I know.
Rule 2: Don't flame strangers. Based on my detailed analysis of the comments left on this blog, if you truly are anonymous (and not some friend of mine too lazy to log in with your own name), what you're writing me usually amounts to a flame. It's just not cool to flame strangers. It's not polite.
(not cool to flame? That's a strange phrase.)
I don't take this thing very seriously or personally, even though it's ostensibly all about me, but what are you people, raised in a barn?
Plus you should all write more comments. If I received a zillion more, the pain of the occcasional flame would dissipate.

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I'd Like a Venti Twitching Fetus-Cino with Cinnamon Sprinkles to Go

the lips don't drip
when you're taking a trip.
the thighs don't lie.

ur a dip.



am i?

Lunchtime IM Poetry with Osama

baste baby
oven 350
taste gravy
taste maybe
hehe
so dellishy!
lil'squishy
heh
cook 'till glazy
12:25 PM
makes ya crazy
feelin' hazy
w the taste shiz-azy
shiz-kebob
corn on the cob
eat like a slob
kiss a man named bob
buy a watch fob
bob likes gravy
baby gravy
he served in the navy
was very bravy
with a man-boy lady
thats pretty shady
taste the shady navy man-boy lady gravy
slurp it down
unless its brown
get rid of tha frown
then get outta town

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More Shameless Self-Promotion Than Usual

Okay, so by now, you've noticed that I keep posting links to my music web site at the bottom of every post, but you should really go and visit it now if you haven't recently. I've made it much prettier, added a couple of demo tracks, photos, basically spruced the place up. There's also the permalink to it on the right-hand side of this page, if you lose track of this post. And soon, very soon, you'll be able to buy CDs and possibly (gasp!) merchandise off of that page. But probably not much with the merchandise until I start to play more gigs. By which I mean any gigs.

Here's another reminder that Seasac Records has a bunch of my stuff (b-sides and demos, mostly), in addition to a whole lot of other cool music, all free and downloadable.

I've also joined the unwashed masses over at MySpace with a latiflearned page. But it's cool, because it's color-coordinated with my real web page. Be my friend if you're on MySpace. Lord knows my meager profile could use a few.

Have I said all of this already? Probably. Never hurts to say it again.

Relevant History

It's worth noting that my Boston friend whose name may or may not rhyme with Osama wrote a poem for/about/in response to me a while back. It's such a beautiful thing. I hope that you enjoy it, too.

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I'm on NPR!

Hey guess what? I'm on NPR's Open Mic Podcast starting today, apparently. They told me that they'd be featuring my music, but they didn't tell me when. It's a good thing I checked it out, or I might have missed it entirely.
If you want to download the track, you can subscribe to the NPR "Open Mic" Podcast in iTunes, or go right here to download it. Tell all your friends!

Latiflearned.com - If you're curious for more tracks, info, gigs, etc. you can find that stuff here.

Update: Here's another link to the actual story about me:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5298286

Another Update: You Macalester folks might like to know that Zack Kline, violinist extraordinaire, has also recently been featured on NPR's open mic. Represent!

Awesome

The Pentagon wants to unleash cyber-insects on our enemies. You know, the terrorists. Wherever it is that they are. Never mind how we'd actually go about controlling insects with a remote control. I think this is fantastic. It's just fucking out of control that somebody out there has the hubris to suggest that we remote-control insects to be our spies. Think of the civilian spin-offs: remote-controlled butterflies with webcam mounts to hover outside of your neighbor's bathroom window. Malaria mosquitos to attack your high-school principal. The fun never ends!
I don't even know what I'm talking about.
I watched the 40-Year-Old Virgin last night, and just about peed all over the couch, I laughed so hard. I thought it ironic, me celibate this year, watching the plight of this (fake) person who's been celibate for 40. It just put my whole shit in perspective, you know? Yeah. Plus it's so funny it induces bowel movements.
Tomorrow I'm going to Ottawa, which should be cold and take way way way too long on the bus. It's actually faster to take a bus to Canada from Boston than it is to take a bus to Northern New York. Strange. It's way cheaper, as well. I plan on taking beef jerky and my iPod Nano, which has proven to be as good a conversation starter as a pet toad in your lap. And if the conversation's still dry, I can always show off my missing tooth.

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blast from the past

Did you know that Iran resurrected Abraham Lincoln to be their new president?

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cognitive dissonance

I love those moments when people's autonomic communication tics clash with their socialized responses. I went to this gym near my house the other day, to check it out, and this fellow (we'll call him "Brad") gives me a tour of the place. "Hi. I'm Brad. What's your name?" He says to me. Donald. Nice to meet you. Then we turn a corner to officially start our tour. The very next thing out of his mouth is "What's your name?" Donald. "Mine's Brad. Nice to meet you." Then we commence with our tour. The first stop on our tour was the men's changing room, then on to the freeweights, cardio, etc. We got back to the office, and he said, "Have you seen the changing room?" I couldn't tell which part of this guy was on autopilot and which part was actually trying to talk to me.
You'll hear it if you listen for it. People walk into my office and say "Hi Donald" under their breath and then "Hello Donald" to my face. Like their little mental rehearsal leaked out into meatspace. My roomate occasionally mutters something utterly uncoordinated with our current social context by way of greeting. Like, we'll both be in the apartment for a couple of hours doing our own thing, and then we'll meet up in some room and he'll say "What's going on?" You know what's going on. We've both been here for hours. This isn't annoying, it's fascinating. I never say anything about it, it just goes into the mental catalog. But I'm taking notice!
What's the normal thing to do socially in this situation? Do you pretend you didn't notice? That's usually my tack. But is it also acceptable to say something like, "You realize that you're skipping like a broken record?" If somebody could get back to me on the protocol, my social life would probably benefit.
Then there's the other question. Why are we skipping like CD players without noticing it? I blame electronic music. It's Aphex Twin's fault. We can trace it farther back. Terry Reilly is the progenitor of our unconscious tics. His minimalist music has chipped away at the very foundation of our cognition.
Shit! I'm going off on a tangent again.
Till next time...
Until we meet again...
Hasta la vista...
My name's Brad. What's yours?

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temperate, with a 35% chance of irony

I received an email just now, and upon perusing the recipients list compulsively (does anybody else do this?), I realized that 90% of the email addresses were gmail-based. Google owns the personal communication of a generation. This blog is google. They know every personal interaction, they have receipts of all of my e-purchases, it goes on and on. What happens if they change their motto to, oh, I don't know... "BE EVIL!" I can see the (slightly modified Onion) headline now:

Google Moves into Sinister "Phase 2" of Operations

Maybe it's time to simply host my own email server and blog. Take the internet back into my own hands. With the Patriot Act coming around again, maybe it's time to escalate the paranoia in both directions. That's what the internet is for. Well, that and porn.
While I'm at it, I should cancel my Friendster and MySpace accounts. I don't know to what degree this would keep the advertisers out, but maybe it could help. On the other hand, I got an advertising call on my cell phone because Latiflearned.com is registered to it, and now the whole world knows. Woops. So maybe having your own web server isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Enough rambling!

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other, related resolutions

I want to write fewer songs about girls. Like any other resolution, this seems to be easier in theory than practice. Which is funny, because having to exercise self-restraint in the songwriting process is akin to dry-humping. It's not precisely what we're built for. It creates tension. But that can be good tension. I feel that unless I write songs about other things, like, you know, fields of sunflowers or very old buildings, I will be an expert at something nobody wants to hear about.

They say that songs had any power at all, we'd all be in love. I think that's uncharitable. Songs have made a lot of otherwise boring sex pretty entertaining. Don't look for an oracle when what you want is a glass of beer. That's been my family motto for 4/7000ths of a generation.

But it's not like anybody's going to be having sex to my music.

If you do, though, let me know. I'd appreciate it.

The other family motto is "Work like dogs, eat like kings."

(He said, writing a totally unnecessary blog post from work...)

With all of that behind me, it's worth noting that 50% of the songs that I've written in the last month have been about girls. Breakups, even. Which is funny, because I haven't broken up with anybody for half a year. Where's my self-control?

tuned in

I'm so tuned in to the frequency of my cell phone's ring that I hear that frequency everywhere. Sometimes I play guitar, and the string harmonics create the exact same frequency. It's usually when I'm playing hard, so I'm not sure if I'm really hearing the phone ring. So I stop playing. Or when I'm listening to music really loudly. Or sometimes I just imagine it. The phone manages to interrupt my life even when it's not doing anything at all.
I see two solutions:

Solution A: Throw the fucking phone out the window. Those devices irradiate your brain and pollute your soul, making you believe that communication and life down to the minute is somehow superior to a more relaxed pace. Faster life is better life. Throw it away.

Solution B: Can my generic telephone ring tone, and get the new Kanye West polyphonic. Impress my peeps on the subway with my vast library of dope phone beats.

Clearly, it's a choice between the lesser of two weevils. I fear change. I'll leave everything the way it is, and adjust myself.

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Crack!

I have one problem tooth. Or should I say had one problem tooth. The only tooth with a cavity (knock on dentin), the only tooth that ever broke. I had a root canal. Didn't take. Had a crown. Broke. Three different times. So today, i had the tooth pulled. For better or worse, that hunk of problem is gone from my life. Hopefully.
They don't tell you very much about what's going to happen when they pull your tooth. This is probably because you're sitting there in the chair, gums numb, thinking things like "This is going to be like pulling teeth! That's exactly what this is! Pulling teeth!." And we all know how hard that is.
But it's really not that bad. You have the option to go under, but I think that's for wussies. All they do is take your tooth in a pair of pliers, and yank it out sideways, using your head as leverage. I thought they'd have something more sophisticated than that, but it's really pretty much the same as the technique I use for pulling nails out of boards.
The bloody tooth stump is pretty cool-looking, too.
I drove to the dentist, which is basically news in itself, because I drive so infrequently these days. Now, I don't know if you've ever driven on a Saturday in suburban Boston, but here's what people do in suburban Boston on a sunny Saturday afternoon: they go and get their car washed.
Now, car wash guys must make a killing, because I only saw two car washes between Jamaica Plain and Norwood, but both of them had lines all the way into the street. I'm thinking: it would take less time and money to go to the store, buy car wash supplies, and do it in your driveway. But clearly I'm missing out on something here. Some essential Boston experience, akin to the joy of going to Fenway park and getting glares from suspicious Red-Sox fans because I'm not wearing anything red. It's like reverse McCarthyism around here. But I digress.
In summation, eat more dried plums, and don't take the gas if you're getting your teeth pulled. It'll be something you can bore your kids about someday. And make sure to check out the Dedham car wash. Dedham. So hot right now.. Dedham.
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My Hopes

People like to talk about the change that's coming over the music and video industry. The transition between analog mediums and non-transferability that comes along with it to digital mediums and the ability to make perfect duplicates. It's not a transition anymore. It's happened. Analog, much as I love it, has been relegated to DJs and audio purists; those willing to put forth an awful lot of effort to listen to music and have it sound real. The rest of the world is on digital, for better or worse.
It's my hope that we'll use this in a good way. I see it going in many directions. For instance, we could end up in a world where you have to pay some fee to Sony every time you want to play a song. It's not out of the question; it's what the record companies have always wanted. Now the technology is in place to do that. We're just not quite under the yoke of that technology yet, with CDs and MP3s still being ubiquitous. Ever try to use somebody else's WMA? Have you noticed the spyware/malware embedded in your latest Warner Bros. CD purchase?
Anyway, I digress from my hope. I see us as potentially being a culture glued to our broadband connections, downloading music at our whim, experiencing our art through a vibrating magnet and an LCD. It's so easy to do things this way. It's cheap, you don't have to get up, it's gratifying, it's instant. Records are so much easier to achieve/create, in a lot of ways, than a solid live performance. But it's my hope that we can parlay this technology into real human contact. It's so easy to hear a band's record, to get that advertisement, as it were, that maybe more people will start going to live shows. When recordings become ubiquitous and essentially free, maybe the live show will become (as it once was and remains for many) the venue where the true originality happens and is expected. The records are what gets you there. Live shows are already the place where artists (and TicketMaster) actually make their money. It would be ironic if we went full circle from the invention of the phonograph, where records were considered a cheap imitation of live shows, through the record-as-product, and back. It would be ironic, but it would also be excellent. Because we've reached a point where we need to make an effort to have actual human interaction, and it's my hope that maybe the availability of everything at our desk will push us back out into the real world, seeking reality with which to corroborate.
Seems like a long shot, but it's actually my driving force in seeking out art. Maybe it could work for everybody...

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen. Then see me live (whenever I get my shit together and start performing live. Anyway, it'll be on that page if I am).

Dried Plums

"Dried Plums" are the best thing to happen to prunes since prunes came about in the first place. The word "prune" has all of these negative connotations. We say "wrinkled like a prune" or "prune-y." Prunes mean old people, and they also mean pooping. Nobody wants to think about old people and pooping. So we don't talk about prunes. And nobody would buy a prune, let alone a whole box, because that would mean being associated with old people and/or pooping. Regardless of how well we would be pooping, we just don't care for that association.
Enter "dried plums." You may have noticed in shopping at your nearest food-conglomerate-convenience-utility store that the word "prune" is absent from the box. Advertisers have become savvy to the poop/prune complex, and have diverted a future generation from having to be subjected to the vagaries of old people, poop, and prunes by calling them what they actually are: dried plums.
Try it. It sounds a lot better. Mmm... I love dried plums.
Here's my new catch-phrase for Girl-Free 2006: "Ought Sex." Two months down and I haven't even broken a sweat.

**Update - 03/01/2006** - The local neighborhood store stopped selling dried plums. Boo.

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New Words (or, A Soapbox for a Soapbox)

I learned a new word today. Actually two words, but they're related: "yupster," and "yindie." Can you guess what this means? Let me quote from the article where I read it (The Dig, 2.22.06, p. 9):

"... the new 'yindie' or 'yupster' trend: young and hip, but professional. Too square for the tatoos and tight pants of the scenesters; too uptight for the relaxed fit of the b-boys and bedside DJs."

This in the context of an article about how a neighborhood (Allston!) is going downhill, because the punks that made it so sweet are leaving and the lame-o students and Young Urban Who-Gives-A-Fucks are moving in.
You can see where I'm headed with this. Tight pants aside, they're describing me here: ripe old age of 23, pro computer skillz, young, hip. No tattoos. More-or-less symmetrical hairdo. Fancy coat. No Technics on my desk. The implication is that if you're "professional," you're square, no matter how hip you look and act. No matter who you are, you're getting judged by your job.
Well, I'm sorry, Ean Frick, if mom doesn't pay my rent and finance my "homegrown" lifestyle. Hipsters are the same as the hippies were: hanging around and looking cool, talking big and living off your newfound morals is a lifestyle you can't support unless mommy and daddy are footing the bill. Sorry that I can't find an image that I'd want permanently etched into my forearm. Sorry that getting on my feet and learning how to pick up my beer bottles off the floor and put them into the recycling qualifies me as not fit to live in your down-to-earth rat-infested Allston Beat utopia. And it's a shame that you feel that way about me because I've got a job; we've probably got more in common than you think.
The first thing you get asked when you meet an American is "What do you do?" We should be more careful about defining ourselves by our employment (or identifying with our lack thereof). Real people don't always do what they want, and real people aren't defined by what they look like. They aren't definable at all.
I don't live in Allston, but gentrification is happening all around Boston. The same trend of homogenization and commodification is happening in Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Brookline, everywhere. The real issue is that the city as a policital entity doesn't care about independent arts, affordable housing (rent control), public services (MBTA, looking at you here), etc., and that the people who live here are all too willing to replace JP O'Drinky's with Club Aqua, or to let somebody else do it for them without putting up a fight. Place the blame where the blame is due, and *do* something about it if it bothers you. For instance, the Brattle in Cambridge has been putting up a good fight to keep it's doors open and independent film happening. Send them a donation; we can turn this town around.

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Compensation

It's funny the ways in which we compensate for the world we've created. We know we're built for grass, but we make roads out of asphalt, and then we have to make special shoes for us to be able to run on those roads without hurting our knees. We create cities, big dense stressful polluting non-human-friendly environments, then cram ourselves into them. We drink a gallon of orange juice a week and take yoga classes and drink de-stress tea, we smoke and we drin, we plug our ears into headphones to dull our senses to the overload. It's funny how humans are so proficient at creating environments that we can't tolerate. But because we're so adaptable, we tolerate them anyway. Modern science allows us to survive everything, enjoy little.
The thing about compensation, though, is that it's just as easy to overcompensate as it is to simply compensate. Especially when it comes to self-medication. The point is to be sure that you're still experiencing the life that you're living. We're living in a time when we've got an option to ignore everything, and paying attention is simply a choice we have to make, not an inevitability. So, um, I ask you to please make the choice to pay attention, and experience your life. If we don't do that, collectively, then the hard times ahead will be made that much harder.

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Moved In

Well, I finally got a bookshelf yesterday, a big beautiful thing, six feet high with shelves over a foot deep. It allowed me to finally unpack the remaining five boxes full of books and CDs that comprise the rest of my life. It was cathartic to see my music, the novels I intended to read and forgot about, my old books on origami, my spanish-lanugage flamenco poetry, guitar parts, and to finally have a place to put them and refer to them daily. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel like yourself, but you don't know you're missing it until you get it back. I get that impression a lot lately, like there's a lot I've been missing, and it's just a matter of waiting before it comes back into my life. But after several months, I can take having a bookshelf (and a desk and a dresser) as finally being able consider myself moved-in to this place.
That said, i'm probably not going to stay in this particular apartment for more than this year. It's just not quite right, for the rent I pay. Not like you need to know why it's not right or how much rent I pay, it just sort of bears saying things like that if I'm to keep up any pretense of the "mass-email"-ness of this blog, and not go the way of a friend who just gave up on blogging in general. I'll probably stay in JP, but don't quote me on that. You can quote me on the girl-free 2006 thing, but not on staying in JP. I'm committed to the former but not the latter.
JP (eace on earth)
Donald

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Evolving

I hear that every seven years, your body has completely regenerated itself. That's to say that in seven years, every cell currently in your body will have been replaced with a similar one. This means that you're literally a new person every seven years. Which explains why I also hear that our lives go in seven-year cycles.
But think about this: say you've got a physical ailment, a bum leg, say. Theoretically, in seven years your leg could have healed itself. It's an entirely new leg, after all. What's to say that it can't be a good leg instead of your old beaten up version? A leg upgrade. So if we could just harness some ability to tell our cells to stop reproducing bad legs and start pumping out good ones, we would be on the road to getting better with time. We would be more like fine wines than nice cheeses. Or would we be like leather bags? I dunno, something that only gets better with age. Like, literally gets better with age. I love this idea. Everybody start telling your body to pick up the pace a little, let's see some real healing!

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