ELM's First Birthday

Pumpkin Patch on Friday

Party on Saturday/Sunday


Como Zoo Trip on Monday

Please Vote in November

It's our only hope.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

- from After Pat's Birthday by Kevin Tillman

Radiohead, a Saving Grace

Purchased Thom Yorke's new album, The Eraser, as a musical backdrop to thesis proposal writing (iTunes Music Store was tempting me for weeks). In high school, I was a huge Radiohead fan (e.g., Pablo Honey, The Bends). OK Computer came out my sophomore year of college but I didn't really start listening to it until graduate school. Now, I'm much more into the sound they introduced in OK Computer and perfected on Kid A and Amnesiac than those rock precursors. Like the last 3 minutes of Paranoid Android, Idioteque, Like Spinning Plates, Kid A, I Might Be Wrong, Packt like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box, create a cacophany of sounds that somehow work together to form a wonderful, haunting, ambient melody. Motion Picture Soundtrack is, I think, one of the saddest songs ever written.

PS Not a huge fan of Hail to the Theif, but hey, they can't all be the White Album.

Thesis Proposal: Status Update

In rewriting the primary "thesis" of my thesis proposal for the, ahem, third time this week, I believe I've finally struck upon something that may stick and, in the process, coined a new term.

phetadata (phe.TA.da.ta, alternate pronunciation: phay.ta.day.ta) n. The digital metadata that is generated by our everyday, physical interactions with the world. [Blend of physical and metadata.]

Thesis Proposal: Status Update

I've completed one page of goodness, two pages of mediocrity and two half-done pages of crap. Reminder: writing is an iterative process.

Hiking Mt. Dickerman (Fall Colors)

[Photo credits go to Danyel Fisher, fellow hiker and confidant]

This Life

You want the truth on this? I think he was somebody who desperately wanted to be popular and, because of that desperation, he wasn't.

-Paul, a high school friend of Jon Ronson

This American Life
6/23, Episode 314