Originally written 05.16.2002.

tim hooked me up with mp3s for the get up kids' recent release: "on a wire". listening to the record as i'm writing this. i'll agree with the review that peter pointed me to that called it "different". it's different alright. i wouldn't say it's not poppy, i don't know if that's possible for the get up kids, but it doesn't have some of the infectious cheesyness that marked their last release. it also doesn't have many of the stylistic elements that they used to define the proto-emo genre on their early records. in a lot of ways, that's refreshing since the genre has become a bit saturated of late, making tguk a favorite target for the buddyhead set. i still like it of course because, as usual, i'm a late adopter when it comes to music. i started listening to tguk at least a summer after dana first pointed out the record. this album is more of a straight-up rock and roll record - well a poppy kind of rock and roll, but rock and roll nonetheless. it comes off as much less burlesque and histrionic than past releases. not as meditative and plodding as the new amsterdams, but a departure from past recordings to be sure. gone are the simple keyboard hooks (well except for on "the worst idea", which competes with "stay gone" as the most get up kids of the songs, and my favorite track, but even there they don't feel the same). they're replaced by moody guitar licks. also, the vocals sound a bit out of place now. sure there's melody, but the get up kids vocals have always had a certain haggardness, a bit of raw emotion, and that roughness around the edges, in the context of these new songs, seems like a blemish. all in all, it's a good record, and perhaps the kind of record that the get up kids need to make. i just can't seem to get into it in the way that past recordings have captured me. still, as the album winds down with "the worst idea" and "hannah hold on", i'm reminded enough of their past song writing conventions to nod my head gently and smile. highlights: "stay gone", "hannah hold on", "the worst idea".

i just gave this record another listen, this time with the songs scrambled in between those by other artists. i want to mention that i really like the song "campfire kansas". i really like it when people write songs that capture moments in their life that are meaningful. this is just a little song about a camping trip, but i find it particularly endearing, probably because i can't remeber the last time i went camping, but look back fondly about the many days i spent out in the woods during my tenure as a boy scout.

Originally written 05.17.2002.

already wrote about this record, but i figured while i was writing about records, i might as well write about this one some more. i really, really like it. i think what makes this record good is that it transforms the politics from the anti-flag records into personal politics. "for pat", "we found a place", and "thanks for the letter" are all prime examples on this record. in some ways, this is the best sort of political music. fugazi is rarely an explicitly politcal band, but always has a strong sense of personal politics. another thing that this record does is that it gives a look on what's underneath all of anti-flag's politics. the beauty of the world that is seperate from materialism and worldly ugliness. in "on the streets tonight", justin certainly wears his heart on his sleeve, and some might almost say that his crooning about an evening with friends and the gentle pulse of city life is ridiculous. i might even think this, it's almost too pretty a picture, but it's a picture that i've painted myself, and it's a view of an idealized world that i would like to be real for some substantial period rather than just the fleeting moments in my life or the three minutes twelve seconds of the song. two tracks later and it's "61c days turned to nights", a perfect love song. the lyrics aren't sublime, but they're blunt and direct with an honesty that is rarely seen when humans talk about each other. this record isn't the sound of a thousand kids in a room raising their fists and decrying the government in unison, it's the sound of a thousand kids sitting in their rooms and reflecting on the state of the world and the state of their lives. while being in the former crowd gives one a sense of accomplishment at the token effort at sedition - you always leave the concert hall sweaty and happy, then you go to bed, the rumble of kids listening to records in their rooms, feeling devestated and hopeful at the same time is the sound that may shake the world off of it's foundations because all those kids don't have the satisfaction of a sweaty post-concert night, it's a night of restless sleep, or maybe, just maybe, a few heavy steps out of the bedroom and into the hollow daylight to make a mark, a mad painter's brush stroke towards a more beautiful portrait of a broken world. the next to last track on the record "casette deck, road trip, grand canyon" made me laugh the first time i heard it. it sounds like a fucking saves the day song off their acoustic ep. there's even a part where justin goes "ayeayeaye", drawing out the vowels like the std vocalist always does. so of course the song sounds great. but on listening to the song again, i realize that the song is better than any std song could ever be. the std songwriter has explicitly stated that he plain makes up characters and situations in his songs, which is cool enough, but even songs that might have some personal commentary are clouded in a certain ambiguity. there's none of that on this song. it's personal and blunt and staggering. a great song. quite frankly, i haven't heard a record that has been this empowering and has made me as excited about making music or listening to it.

Originally written 05.17.2002.

thankfully, the refridgerator in the flat got fixed faster than the phone. the think had been broken for about a week, and it was really nasty. between the rotting food inside and the mildew that was beginning to grow around the area where the freezer had defrosted, the common room reeeked. apparently the gas that provided cooling for refridgerator all leaked out making refridgeration impossible. it will be nice to be able to keep proper food once again.

Originally written 05.16.2002.

• 
  went into king's buildings to see if i could get hermione booted. it seems that she had some problem with the console. rebooted the physical host which seemed to fix things. also, it seems the default route doesn't get set which is a problem for remote admin.
  


• 
  compiled a version of the syslogging bash that is linked against the glibc that comes shipped with redhat 6.2. put the binary in CVS.
  


• 
  compiled my own stripped down version of the 2.4.18-24um kernel and put the configuration in CVS.
  


• 
  applied Jeff Dike's kernel patch which logs all data that goes over a tty to session files.
  


• 
  the aforementioned patch logs all the files to the current directory. not really useful for my purposes. so, i did a little hacking and made it so the uml kernel takes a log directory as a parameter (tty_log_dir=) and logs the tty data to files in that directory. put my patch in cvs.
  

Originally written 05.16.2002.

got a hurried phone call from erin where she said that the internship that she had applied for had already been given to someone else. so, it looks like my plans to live rent free in sf are dashed and i'm going to be in columbus this summer. not a big deal. the biggest hassle is going to be telling the EFF that i can't do SF this summer. maybe i can still telecommute. i hope it doesn't appear to unprofessional. at least i'll be closer to tim this summer, and maybe we can catch a couple of shows or something.

Originally written 05.15.2002.

"Feminists have made the argument that women can tell the difference between coercion and consent. Women also have desires of their own. A similar argument can be made about teen sexuality. Teens are sexual and do have desire. It is our obligation as adults to respect their sexual autonomy."

"Feminists have pointed out that there is violence against women, and when it happens, we need to punish that. We need to create a culture where women have the ability to protect themselves. For children, the issues are similar. Children are going to be out in the world; they are going to be seeing media. So we need to prepare them with personal skills and good information. We need laws to protect them if they are harmed, but we also need to empower young people to express themselves sexually."

- judith levine, author of the controversial Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, as quoted in an article about feminist resistance to censorship laws like COPA

Originally written 05.15.2002.

looks like mario is posting to tim's blog now.

Originally written 05.15.2002.

• fixed problem with log rotation script. the portion that tarred/gzipped the snort tcpdump log did a filetest for a non-existant file.


• looked at the console for hermione, she just sort of hangs on boot. She doesn't really provide any good info. I'm trying to compile my own uml kernel to see if that fixes anything.


• figured out what the problem was. my modified version of bash was linked against the libs for rh7.2 and obviously this wouldn't work for the rh7.2 filesystem

Originally written 05.14.2002.

pink has a new video out. i saw it the other day on viva+. it's like a pop-punk song almost. really teen-angsty and rock-sounding. apparently the girl from 4 non-blondes writes a lot of her stuff which might account for some of the more rock-sounding stuff. pink's better than most pop stuff at least.

whatched "ring 2" last night, the sequal to the j-horror flick i watched last week. as with most horror films, the sequal wasn't quite as good, but i still really liked it. perhaps the most perfect modern horror movies ever made. the idea of the television transferring deadly evil to the viewer is an incredibly powerful device for getting the viewer scared. maybe one of the few films that is better on the small screen. the "blair witch project" uses similar innovation in story devices, but the problem is, if you've never really been lost in the woods or wandered around the woods after dark, the potency of the film is lost. however, almost everyone has watched tv, and that seems to make the ring series universally scary. aside from the main device, there are a lot of nice subtleties that makes the film build up to a frightening finish. the film relies on the strangeness of the imagery rather than it's graphicness which again, seems to have a more potent effect than typical horror blood and guts, to which many viewers seem desensitized.

went on a long-ass run yesterday. i'm in awful shape now, too much time in front of the computer and not enough outside, but sometimes when i run, i just get really into the freedom of the activity. i take a turn off my planned route and get excited by the notion of seeing a new part of town and just keep running until i realize that i'm really far away. ended up on the west side of town out towards the mcewans brewery and the big ugc cinema. edinburgh's weird because although there's neighborhoody stuff all around, but most of the essential locations are near the center of the city, so there's not a whole lot of need to explore. it's convenient for me, since i don't have a bike or car, but i sort of like having to go see different parts of town. the columbus neighborhoods can be a hassle if you don't have a car, but it's kind of cool to go to clintonville for laundry and the food co-op, short north for art, bexley or grandview for the cinema, etc, etc.

started revising for exams today. ugh.

tim sent me justin sane's (of anti-flag fame) solo release, "life, love, and the pursuit of justice". this guy sure wants to be billy bragg, but in a good way. just really simple songs. personal, intimate, everything that a solo album should be. in some ways, it has a depth that most anti-flag records lack. it's amazing. who would have thought justin sane could sound like saves the day? these are songs that i would write if i had more musical talent. i'll be listening to this record a lot.

Originally written 05.14.2002.

• put my paper and the setup scripts into CVS


• switched hermione's filesystem to a redhat 6.2 install, unfortunately, she doesn't network anymore

Originally written 05.12.2002.

last night rob, iain, anais, and i had a really unsettling experience, and one that i was surprised to have had in edinburgh and not in columbus. we were having a movie marathon. rob rented "the lost world" (lame) and i rented "the others" (cool, but not so much when you already know the twist - cheers tim). We set up rob's computer monitor and speakers connected to my laptop in the common room so we could all watch the dvds in comfort. we were halfway through "the others" when we heard a girl screaming outside. at first we thought it was just somebody carrying on, as screaming tends to be commonplace around the student housing, but the screaming carried on enough for iain and i to go to the window. we looked out and heard some more shouts, and saw someone dash around the corner into the alley. soon we saw a bunch of people crowded around outside, and later the cops came. this seems really uncharacteristic for the area as it's pretty well-lit and highly trafficked. and i never felt as though my sense of security in this city was false, as can sometimes be the case back in columbus. we're still not sure exactly what happened. it could have been a mugging, rape, hit and run, who knows in the end? it's just frightens me a bit that my first reaction, on hearing screaming, was to think "that's someone fucking around" instead of "that's someone who needs help".

Originally written 05.12.2002.

yesterday i went on a bus trip with my study abroad program to go see glamis castle. i wasn't too keen on going, but felt i should take advantage of the opportunity. glamis is up near dundee, so i at least got to see some of the scottish countryside and cross over the firth of forth. the castle was pleasant enough, and had been modified many times since it's original conception as a hunting lodge. it is still the home of the bowes-lyon(sp?) family, who live in a wing of the castle not converted into a museum. the castle is famous, for one, because it is the setting of shakespeare's macbeth, though historians suggest that shakespeare's account is historically dubious and doubt that any of the action actually took place at glamis. it's also unsure as to whether shakespeare had ever been to the castle himself. more recently, the castle is famed as the childhood home of the late queen mother. the thing that i was struck with more than anything by the castle was the utter lack of pretense. the collections of heirlooms seemed jumbled and like those of any family, though certainly more valuable. poorly painted paintings; ridiculous displays of stuffed game, arranged together in glass cases depicting scenes that would never occur in nature; and just tons of miscellaneous memorabilia from the ages. the whole place gave me a sense of the demise of royalty and heraldry. everything was so normal, so homey. outside the garden, there was even the graveyard for family pets. sure they had actual stone tombstones (i mistook them for human graves until i saw an epitaph that read "... our beloved guinea pig"), but it still seemed surprisingly normal. it was a beautiful sunny day, and after i took the tour of the castle, i sat in the italian garden and read some d.h. lawrence. i really don't like his stories. he creates interesting enough characters, but seem to have little need for plot development. the last short fiction collection i read was 9 stories by salinger, and salinger is able to somehow craft scenes of intimate human interaction that are engaging in a way that lawrence's just aren't. sitting in the garden too, made me think that the castle, and the institution that it represents, was slowly decaying. the flowers were fresh, but some of the leaves of the trees were going brown, and the garden seemed cold and isolated inside it's aging walls.

Originally written 05.11.2002.

or at least i spent part of last night hanging out w/ this kid who, though perhaps not as endearing as the salinger protagonist, he has all the other traits. he lives in manhattan and got kicked out of his boarding school last year for drinking, and he's now in edinburgh because his parents wanted to send him off to college somewhere where he wasn't likely to face similar expulsion. this kid is ultra wealthy, or at least his parents are, to the point that he has more dollars than sense. at least he's generous with his money as he was buying champagne and wine for everyone, handing out cigars, and smoking people up. oddly enough, he didn't even have a pound to play poker; apparently he lives completely off his credit card. the thing about this kid is that he comes off as totally crazy - you never know if he's telling the truth or totally lying. like the story he told about getting loked out on coke and ritalin and envisioning taliban fighters outside his window. when i went out this morning, he was passed out in the stairwell outside his flat*.

* apparently agatha also saw the kid in the stairwell and almost mistook him for dead. she was about to move him to the recovery position and start cpr when he awoke and assured her that he wasn't dead, though he wished that he was.

Originally written 05.11.2002.

reason one million, one thousand and three i don't drink: the morning after. rob came down to the common room and told me that i should go upstairs and have a look at pete. i went upstairs and saw the tragic comedy of pete passed out next to his door, naked from the waist down, with his trousers around his ankles. rob, who had the unfortunate experience of having to step over pete on his way downstairs reported that pete was also clutching his exposed knob in his sleep. we hypothesized about how pete got into his present state. the prevailing theory is that pete went to the bathroom and couldn't be bothered to pull his trousers up or make it the 6 feet to his bed. so what did rob and i do? we did what anyone would have done. we woke iain and got it all on videotape.