It is strange to find out what may spur a personal sene of pride. This morning a link to the wfmu (a really great station coming out of Jersey City, prolly my next home) blog was brought to my morning attention and alas, there was a picture of me karaoking with my favorite karaoke partner of all time: Linda “Big Mouth” Graham. When I saw the picture, a sense of strange and usual pride (but pride) welled deep inside of me. I was so happy to see a picture of me karaoking during the best night of my karaoke life, representing the core of what I think as exquisite karaoke joy. I guess the picture has made itself to other websites.
The pictures came as a reminder that I have denied myself this pleasure, mostly because I can’t handle bar smoke (it gives me sinus problems). I went from weekly karaoke in SF to basically none in Chi-town. As much as I am going to miss this city, I look forward to moving east where I can once again belt it out, smoke free

Come celebrate the Debian release with those from Chicago and the greater Chicagoland area. Here are the details and we will be enjoying what is probably one of the nicest views of the city.

I just got back from a wedding in Minneapolis. At the end of the celebration we ended up in bar of extremely unusual proportions, Nyes : an “extremely dangerous” polka band in one quarter, piano karaoke bar in another, glitter naughahyde furniture a top of deep red carpeting, waitresses and bartenders from a different era, and a motely mix of patrons. I dare say that it is worth a 7 hr drive from Chicago just to go there, for one night…

An auspicious day: Sarge has been released and the Golub has defended his dissertation with success! Congratulations Alex.

So Boing Boing is reporting on what is being dramatically designated as Greatest Phone Message in the World. I too was there and did spill a laugh or two over that mermaid message. It made me really miss, however, the rolm phone which was our local internet, connecting the entire campus together.

There was nothing like coming home to a good audio message mixed in with all these friendly reminders and questions that are now passed on over email. Now I barely touch the phone and it has decidedly become about the worst way to reach me. I check the messages about every 10 days, the eluisve robotic man-voice saying “you have 53 messages….”

So, I am not going out much these days, having entered monk-mode as I wrap up this year. But But But I have already got my tix to see Roy Brown (warning his site makes my browser crash) a Puerto Rican folk singer and political activist who is playing Monday April 4th at Roberto Clemente High School in Humbolt Park. Sponspored by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center and the National Boricua Human rights Network, I encourage folks to go.

His songs are stunning to say the least and I am very happy that I will get to see him live. Here is a sample of one of my favorite songs, Descarga Number 51.

So althought it is a little on the pricey side (150 Euro), What the Hack looks like it will pretty incredible. They finally have a website up for registration and starting to fill with some other information. I still don’t know if I have the resources to make it there this summer but I will give it my best.

While the craigslist aesthetic is still starkly simple, once in a while, there is a post that sticks out and in this case with some serious froggy style. What I am most surprised about is that this ad is Chicago based. Must have been induced by the extreme cold that leaves many Chicagoans, stranded indoors with lots of extra time.

Ok, so my computer managed to get here before 10 am despite the China mishap. Now that is globalization for you. But now, I am debating or really trying to muster the inner strength necessary to brave the (INTENSE CHICAGO) cold to get a blank CD to burn a new Linux distro, Ubuntu which is supposed to be a snap to install compared to its “brotherly source” debian.

We will soon see if that is fact and fiction. In fact, since many of the Ubuntu developers have the same computer I have, Ubuntu apparentlyd detects the IBM x40 hardware with no problem. Given that in the past getting things like sounds, video, pcmcia etc to work with Debian on my past laptops was nothing short of a grueling death ritual, I look forward to this supposed new found “ease of installation…”

There are some authors, like Dick Hedbidge, that I love to read, especially to re-read after a considerable absence. It is not necessarily because I agree with everything he says but because of what he loves to write about: style. His style of writing, at once very precise yet expansive and textured with such excessive metaphors and vivid language, creates a type of text in which excess, an excess of meaning is created. This excess then becomes the basis for allowing you to make a series of assocations between his material and your thoughts (on some unrelated material) so many associations, it almost as if you can hear you brain’s synapses firing away. Next week I will write something more precise about what I mean by all of this on a new blog, 775 that I will be participating on as soon as it gets off the ground.

Oh and I also like Hedbidge because he looks like a thiner, more angsty Bill Murray.

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