beancounters

Stop Motion Studies

David Crawford presents a series of stop motion studies, photographed in in the Tokyo subway one in the course of one morning.

In these photographs, the body language of the subjects becomes the basic syntax for a series of animations exploring movement, gesture, and algorithmic montage. The Stop Motion Studies extend my long-standing interest in narrative and, in particular, look at the subway as a stage upon which social dynamics and individual behavior are increasingly mediated by digital technology.

Mkay. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fun of snapping pictures of people sleeping.

Why I have a blogroll

Once, I knew this guy who started a blog. He –

(Just one moment. I’m writing this in Word, and there seems to be some dictionary confusion. Word does not know what “blogroll” and “blog” are. Imagine! Just how old is this damned program, anyway? Here, let me take a mo and inform the assistant what we’re up to. I’ll give it just the executive summary:

::click-click-clickety-click:: “… A-a-and, that’s why they say ‘all your base’. We green?”

“Whaaaaatever.")

This particular guy followed me back to my site after I commented on a fairly popular blog. I visited his new blog in turn, and we swapped a few comment pleasantries. Then he e-mailed me and asked me for a reciprocal link. He would link me in his blogroll if I linked him too.

Friday Roundup: For Maya

(Maya has to finish writing a chemistry book before close of business Friday, and finish a midterm, which means she has to pull and all-nighter (remember those?) and be basically a basket-case for a few days. So kid, these are for you.)

Ethel

Things could be worse: this could be your boyfriend. [via Robert]

Things could reeeeally be worse!

Dumb dares for the office [via Jennifer]

Here's a lady who knits at concerts ... do you know anybody else who would do that?

Comes now Freakonomics, complete with a blog. Could be a good book to get mad at over the summer.

And last but not least, the Flickr memory game.

Now back to work!

A word from our Beancounter

You should know: It's killing me that I can't comment on my own damned blog during the day, due to the cruel lockout. Killing. Me. But I'm still around on weekdays, getting e-mails, and still watching you like a hawk. So don't try anything funny.

Sometimes you're the knot, sometimes you're the ax

Whups, I went back on my earlier decision. Kid A was back in the CD player this morning. Sue me.

Bunny got done reading the comics page in silence on the way to school, and hit play. After about thirty seconds, she wrinkled her nose. "Gee, this is exciting."

"It's different," I said as I tried to defend my backsliding ways. "Most music tells a story. This music tries to tell ... a mood. A complicated mood."

"Oh. Uh-huh? Hmmph." [Translation: Say, lady, maybe you should have that checked!]

Basically in my daughter's world, if John Lennon didn't sing about it first, then it isn't worth knowing. And when you think about it, the Beatles put out some very simplistic stuff, lyrically, in their Rubber Soul years.

For example: "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man. You better run for life if you can. Catch you with another man, that's the end, little girl."

Now I ask you. What is that? There's no request for a Mars/Venus encounter session there. Nobody's spending the next 12 Wednesday afternoons in marriage therapy in that household. That's what I mean. Cut 'n' dried. Stuff an 8 year old can relate to more than we can. Though it's all still great, don't get me wrong. It's some of the best shit to sing along with.

Hecka sweet tuneage

I think I'll switch out the music in my car before I go to bed tonight. Kid A is a good CD, and a taste I arduously acquired after much patience, but it puts my head in a conceptually weird place right before I have to try and interact normally with others.

What should I put in instead? Album rock? That's some of Bunny's favorite music. She says she's the only kid in her 3rd grade class who's ever heard of the Moody Blues. All the other kids are into rap. That's probably because she's an only child, and BB and I are hecka old; she's sheltered.

Did I tell ever you my hecka story? I'm sitting at lunch somewhere, with two coworkers who were about ten years younger than me. I don't remember what they were talking about. I'd mostly tuned them out. Suddenly one of them remarks, "Yeah, and then he got hella mad -" she glances at me. "uh, hecka mad."

Can you stand that she cleaned up her invented language on my account?

OK, here's what's going in:

• Squirrel Nut Zippers, Hot (thus replacing one concept album with a peppier one)
• Traffic, Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (self-explanatory)
• Eagles, Hotel California (just kidding, Jo)
• Jethro Tull, War Child (don't know that one well, except "Bungle in the Jungle")
• Pearl Jam, Vitalogy (so I'll have something hella hecka deep to sing along with)

Budgets midterm

We got our midterms back in Budgets. See, here's the deal. The topic of the midterm was, analyze this year's state budget by weighing it against the concepts put forth in the main book for our class. How would the book's authors consider Ahnold's Live Within Our Means proposal from last January? Are the precepts in the book better or worse than this? How much better or worse? Could the precepts ever be applied to California? If so, when, where, how much? And so forth.

Then, after the professor rips on thoughtfully critiques the midterm, he gives it back and we have two weeks to revise the thing and turn it in as the final.

So, I'm sure it was important to the prof to see a solid beginning to my paper, and point out where there's room for improvement. All the places. And give me a B, not a B+ or anything, because again, it's good to have room for improvement.

I will not get depressed.

Suppose I should go now and read the thing. How are other people working and familying and doing this school business? I don't know anybody else in Budgets who has a little kid. I should ask around, make this survey more scientific.

Sheep Dash

Test your reaction time with this game, or one of the others available.

I thought I was pretty quick, but only rated "bobbing bobcat". Hmmph!

Sloppy security at the DMV

Got my new driver's license in the mail today, and it's all completely accurate except the picture. It seems that when my back was turned at the DMV, some puffy, middle-aged woman with uncombed hair ran over and had her grinning picture taken for my license. They're getting a very strongly worded complaint from me in the morning.

So lemme get this straight ...

• Blockbuster movie about a sinking boat: $7 million.
• Bag of popcorn: $5.50.
• Being King of the World: priceless.

Here's a fascinating wrinkle in the world of big budget filmmaking. I could have guessed that the making of $100m movies takes some international financial backing of legendary proportions. But this goes beyond the obvious. It seems that big-budget movies such as LOTR are easier to produce, fiscally, than small-budget art films, due to loopholes in international law! And nobody's in a hurry to close the loopholes because, as near as I can tell from this one article, everybody's economy benefits in the long term.

No wonder all was forgiven when Waterworld opened in Europe!

(Literally) ripped from the headlines

My mother will cheerfully tell you herself that she usually doesn't bother to wrap presents - normally, gifts from her are uniquely packaged in grocery bags, pillow cases, cardboard boxes, or laundry baskets.

But my mom says she has been working to put a bit of a gloss on her domestic side, out of a sense of solidarity during Martha's house arrest. Here we see two of my birthday gifts, actually wrapped in paper.

What do you think? Do you think disaster gift wrapping will catch on?

Now we know "too much" ...

Though a standard map shows nothing unusual about the area, Google's satellite map shows Area 51 in a different light. If you look closely at the lower left-hand corner, you can see Mulder arguing with CSM about the truth about the Con.

[Via Google Sightseeing, with a foil-lined hat tip to Bowietreks.]

The feline Vanna

So I'm visiting a nursery with my mother yesterday, and one of the owners has just gotten done telling us about the Nursery Cat. It seems she used to take her primary duty - chasing off other neighborhood cats - quite seriously, but lately she's been sadly derelict in her duties.

Later, while we're wandering the back lanes, we look behind us and here comes Her Majesty herself. She doesn't smile or acknowledge our adoration whatsoever. But as soon as she knows she has our attention, she veers over, climbs into one of the sapling pots, and curls up around the trunk, for all the world like she's modeling the tree.

And we realize there must have been some confusion in Personnel. This person does not consider herself a mere guard; she's really in sales, and at the top of her game, at that.

In which I call in my geek superhero buddies

I have to buy gas this morning before Bunny and I make the trip to my mom's house. I've postponed the purchase for days, and now I'm running on fumes. Don't know what I was waiting for; perhaps for the Chevr0n clerk to come running out to the corner sign, waving a big blue 1 and shouting at the passing traffic, "Corporate called! It's all a mistake! Gas is actually only $1.39 a gallon!"

::siiiigh::

And then, I woke up. And it was all a happy dream!

A cloudy day this morning. My Bay Area blogger friends say it's raining there; maybe we'll see some inclement weather here on my inland blog later. Not too much, though, I hope, or it'll really wreak havoc on my monthly bandwidth.

Ooh, I have a question for you guys about bandwidth. Typepad doesn't charge if you go over your monthly allotment of 3 gigs, of course. The Pirate Code is more what you'd call Guidelines. Still, this month I'm at 9 gigs already - I'll be at 12 by the month's end. Isn't that excessive? What am I doing that should be corrected? Am I posting too many pics? Am I getting too many Google hits? Is it the fact I have two blogs? The second blog isn't all that big! Give me some advice, please, because I'd really like to see that number reduced.

Also, I'm at almost 82% of my full bandwidth limit. This is a more serious situation. I guess I'm supposed to archive and delete old posts, but is that a complicated undertaking?

Will you ever return to me after this?

(I think I'll risk it.)

::ahem::

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to push the big red button. [via Daisy]

::ducks and runs::

Same ol' Pope!

Ricky wonders why some people in Rome are a little too enthused that the newly-elected pope is a ver-r-ry old man ...

Why don't they want these Popes to hang around? Does their "Oh, hey, look at me! I'm the Pope!" attitude start to get on the cardinals' nerves, or something?

Are Popes like houseguests or unfrozen fish? After a while, they start to stink?

Maybe they're hoping more popes will achieve the great change!

A Need For Feed

Here's a cute game: supersize your cubicle-dwellers with breakfast from BK.

Hell's bells, I put in that much croissant-slinging and I still got fired? I think I prefer the subserv1ent ch1cken.

[via]

You're not a true grad student unless you swear. A lot.

Long-ass day, and being in Econ tonight didn't help. Fuuuuuck. Time seems to drag in there. Jessica (I think that's her name) says it's not our imagination, either; it's a full-blown, objective temporal anomaly, produced by the teacher himself. Not that he does it on purpose; he's an avatar of temporal displacement. Yes! It makes so much sense, Jessica! It's the only explanation! That's why he always looks so oblivious too, when four hours have gone by but on our wall clock it's only been, like, forty minutes. He has a perfect lack of awareness. That, and he doesn't wear a watch.

Some bugged out at break. I didn't (foolishly), though my required contribution was over and he'd never freakin' notice, because I felt guilty leaving without even having read this evening's assignment. I thought I should at least listen to the lecture and take notes.

Fool! Ask yourself, how many weeks have I sat through this man's course(s)? The answer is, 22 weeks. Or in non-displaced time, more like 194 weeks.

The subject for tonight was the economic implications of applying private sector principles to K-12 education. Well, everybody has an opinion on that, right? And shit dude, if it doesn't happen to correlate to this week's reading, too damn bad. So on and on they blathered about their elementary school years. And he let them. What does he care? He's an avatar of temporal displacement! It's only a few minutes in his reality!

Everyone who takes this guy for 207 (statistics and regression analysis) says it's like getting operated on without anesthesia. I can take a hint.

Cool clocks

These clocks are so nifty, when you look at them you'll almost lose track of time. Which would be, you know, kind of paradoxical. Hmm. Work on that. [via my non-blogging mom]

Shake it, Satchmo

Oops I Did It Again was recorded in April, 1932 in a Chicago studio, by Louis Armstrong and elements of Zilner Randolph's touring group. "Oops!" failed to make the chart impact of "All of Me," and soon fell out of print. The song remained all-but-forgotten until sixty years later ...

Listen to the classic original at Supermasterpiece. Bless the internets for finally bringing Louis the credit he deserves! [via]