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Decisiones

Dad,
It's difficult for me to think of good times with you, but something that does come to mind is how you'd translate those wonderful Ruben Blades songs for me, word for word.

El borracho est convencido
que a l el alcohol no le afecta los sentidos

It was nice of you to do that. I could tell how much you loved the songs, and it made me feel good to know that you wanted to share that with me. I wonder if they're letting you listen to music in jail. I suppose not.

The alcoholic is convinced
that the alcohol does not affect his senses

I can…

The Existential Angst of Ichiro

Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners may be our era's Yogi Berra.

Sample: "If I'm in a slump, I ask myself for advice."

Via Mike's Web Log.

A Dublin Without Guinness?

That just seems so wrong. But the article is a reasonable excuse to link to this.

A Full-Length Commute

I have a full-length commute. It lasts just about as long as an album. For instance, if I plug in the iPod and press play on Dinosaur Jr.'s Beyond just as I leave my apartment, the album comes to a glorious end exactly as I enter our office's elevators. This was a great discovery.

Now that I've loaded the iPod with lots of my favorite music, I've been enjoying its Shuffle feature. And, I wonder: Is the iPod even smarter than it looks? Because it seems to be the best DJ in the world, putting together songs that are thematically and stylistically similar, somehow making connections…

10 Worst Jobs in Science

These don't sound fantastic, but it's not like washing test-tubes is all that hunky-dory.

Swaying to Seemingly Silent Tunes

"Congratulations," the comment began.

And I nearly deleted it. I figured it was some sort of spam. Congratulations, you've been pre-approved for a Platinum Visa Checkcard. Congratulations, you've been entered to win a free trip to Europe. Congratulations, You Won!!!

But then I read it again. "Congratulations," wrote Todd Collins, "you're about to become a car hit statistic!"

Sheesh, man. Thanks.

He was referring to my enthusiasm over listening to an iPod during my commute to and from work. The music moves me. I haven't yet completely leapt into wild and…

On the Road with <I>On the Road</I>

Book collector Jeff Wong thinks the coolest collector's edition of OTR would be a limited reproduction of the scroll. Me too, although I'm sure I couldn't afford one.

Sweet Children

With increasing frequency, a litany of strange packages began arriving in my mail recently. Inside were, and continue to be, a series of very strange discs, entitled, Rockabye Baby!, that purport to be rock tunes made into lullabies. My first reaction? Smoking crack, as well all well saw in the 90's, can be a terrible, terrible thing.

Coldplay, The Beach Boys. The Eagles (easy to see why that one works), Pink Floyd (which I've nodded off to many times, course that coulda been all the…) all arrived and got a dutiful listen. But then came the terrible twosome of Tool and Green Day. Being…

Festival

The JVC Jazz Festival is in New York City (a bit of an absurdity: New York City is a jazz festival, all the time). A crazy schedule prevents me from seeing much this year (less and less of this festival is actually jazz, in any case), but I’m definitely catching the Keith Jarrett-Gary Peacock-Jack DeJohnette trio, Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, and Lee Konitz playing with a few bands, in honor of his 80th birthday (!), Monday night at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

Jarrett, whose stature as the premiere jazz pianist can’t really be contested, has been at his peak the past few years, and his…

Buzz Kill

A long, ultimately inconclusive, fascinating look at Colony Collapse Disorder.