Rotorglow

Ice Rocket
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 28 Feb '07, 12.19am EST.

I visited Simone and the Rocket this past Sunday afternoon, and shot some pix (actually, quite a lot) of Rocky tearing around in the snow and exploring the ice. I think this is my favorite. I'll explain why (and post other shots) a little later.

Yokozuna

Albert just launched his blog. And got an awesome scholarship.

After watching this report about emo, I had to watch this speech (for the umpteenth time) by Jim Valvano at the 1993 ESPY awards in order to restore a little faith in the world.

Modern Mechanix

I forget what the context was (and it can't possibly matter, because I'm sure the context had no bearing on the link itself--and that's not attitude, that's a fact), but Clampants pointed me to something on Modern Mechanix a week or two ago, and I'm now hooked.

I've always loved this kind of retro-futurism, with wild-ass predictions about how nuclear fusion would provide electricity that was too cheap to meter, how quickly the amphibious flying cars we'd be able to purchase by 1983 would get us from our offices 15000 feet above California to our undersea villas in the Caribbean, and how Bakelite would allow for entire cities to spring up in previously uninhabitable places (like Tashkent or Revere).

But Modern Mechanix takes things a step further, going after more mundane technologies like mushroom farming, trusses ("perfect in every way!") and S&M crowd control.

It's an incredible resource, and I've had to restrict myself to reading only 5 articles a day. Because with lots of things careening off the (invisible, magnetic, atomically electrified) tracks, it's weirdly amazing/amazingly weird to look back on how good things were supposed to be by now.

Retro-Escapism: Solving Today's Problems...Yesterday.

QUASIPRESS: Hip hour in the cliff and the coil reputation corridor

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Van Halen, REM and (the most of the greatly) Patti Smith were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today.

Clampants has the whole story over at the QP.

Paleo-Future

After I posted a link to Modern Mechanix, I got to thinking more about paleofuturism, even going so far as to think I'd invented the term.

I didn't, of course. As I should have expected, there's a blog called Paleo-Future, and it's great.

This post will serve no purpose except to say how great it is to be watching hoops (Holy Cross is hanging tough with Southern Illinois, and the Cross has this guard who's, like, my size, but...tirelessly awesome), with some music playing (Portishead), a beer (the last of my Yards Brewing Company IPA) and the sound of the sleet pouring against on the windows. It's dark, and the sky has that bright brownish-orange glow.

Somehow, in cities, stormy nights are weirdly bright.

I've been in a...weird/bad bood for a couple of days, and I can't really explain why. And I can't sleep. (Ditto.)

I mean, I had kind of a busy weekend, with parents in town, the moving of summer wheels from a basement into storage, a terrible Carolina collapse against Georgetown (who I'm finding easy to hate again, like I did when I was 15). I also managed to let a domain of mine fall into the hands of a Sino-Caribbean holding company for at least the next year. And that's got me a little pissed too.

The weekend was really pretty good. I mean, Scooter Girl (who, though she understands a little something about screaming at the TV, was a real peach for sticking around through to the bitter end of overtime) and I got some pizza to take the sting out of the Heels loss, and I didn't go into the office on Monday, having already scheduled a day of writing documentation and getting roughed up by my accountant (on behalf of the IRS).

But it's now early Thursday, and there's an action-packed weekend in prospect: I'll be hanging out with/taking care of the eldest Lynch children, Remy and Otis; I might put my newly-liberated summer tires on the car; I'll dispassionately watch a couple of Final Four games (with no clue of whom to root for; can they all lose? No? Well, then UCLA, I guess...); Scooter Girl and I will get sweaty to the Nuyorican sounds of Antibalas at the Middle East, which will be super-awesome; and before that's over, it'll be April Fool's day, for fuck's sake.

And you know what April Fool's Day means....

But with all that in the pipeline, I'm still crabby; tired of "zones" (the Demilitarized, the Green...); fed up with politics and the DOJ and death and bent Ferraris and amendments and bills. And just....tired.