Oh poor me.

OK, it has officially been more than four weeks that I have been sick, off and on, thinking I am not, but then (I learn after a busy day or a hard workout) not. This week it is more on, but then not so on that you don't wonder if you're being a big wussy for taking a break.

Do I even need to tell you that this is wearing on me? Or how poorly I am adapting to this idea that if I push myself it will only make me sick again? Or what I would give you if you would make my throat not sore? And did you know that the only thing worse than being sick is having to grade when you're sick? Why is it that so many of my bad-luck incidents get combined with grading?

All right: that is the end of my self-pity diatribe. You may return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Get plenty of deferments / Learn to shoot a gun.

Treat yourself to this. At least now we know where the undisclosed location is.

Friday Random 10: "Got To Let It Show" Edition.

Came to a breaking point in the work (That's right, folks, I'm actually writing again!) and I don't feel like playing Text Twist today, and that in itself is amazing. Besides, the cat is lying on the far side of the monitor, instead of between me and the keyboard, or on top of the numeric keypad, or between the keyboard and monitor. And there has not been enough time since the lunch I just ate that I can yet risk the core exercises I need to do (because the lunch is better in the stomach than out). And the laundry is happily spinning in its machine--no folding to do yet. And we all know that it is too early in the weekend to start the pile of grading and too early in the day to crack a beer.

So given that it's Friday, you know what all that means: the time has come for me to break out of my shell.

1. Diana Ross, "I'm Coming Out"
2. Giorgio Gaber, "Destra - Sinistra"
3. Diana Krall, "The Look of Love"
4. Breakestra, "Cramp Your Style"
5. Clifton Chenier (the king of the bayou), "Pepper in My Shoe"
6. Rickie Lee Jones, "Running From Mercy"
7. Nanci Griffith, "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go"
8. Al Green, "Let's Stay Together"
9. Propellerheads, "You Want It Back"
10. Faye Wang, [one of those songs I don't know the title of]

Thank you for your immediate attention.

DEAR YOPLAIT, DANNON, AND ALL YOU OTHER PEOPLE WHO SEAL YOUR YOGURTS WITH FOIL:

Is it so fucking much to ask that you could find a way to seal your yogurts so that when a person opens them they do not get yogurt blowback all over their nice work clothes?

Huh???

Ooh-la-la la la-la-la-la-la.

Your V-Day gift from me is up at The Art of the Mix. Sorry it wasn't available in time for last-minute frantic gift purchases, but maybe that's all for the best. All the same, if you want one, lemme know.

XX

It's that time of year again, when the PP and I decide which sports we would do if we lived where there was snow and if we had a shot at going to the Winter Olympics. We're both thinking that the US Virgin Islands might be our greatest hope for that second item, but we still have the snow problem.

Admittedly, the Winter Olympics come at a perfect time of year. We are both completely wiped out, and ready to pass some time on our asses--so let's watch skiing! We even watched the Opening Ceremonies--or most of it. The PP was afraid of the fiery skaters, since he figured they had to be wearing backpacks full of acetylene, and that seems plain dangerous--even for Italians. And if you have pin-striped hair, as Jim Lampley does, then you should not wear a pin-striped suit.

It has been fun to see shots of the parts of the city that I found closed when I was there back in July. I missed the Gates of Hell, apparently.

Four years ago we determined that I should be a speed skater, since I already have the enormous legs. We tried a little roller blading, which is a lot of fun if you don't run into hills. Well, maybe those of you with downhill skiing experience would not be so daunted by the hills. Plus I totally freaked myself out during a weaving skating experience at a local conference center with good paths when I realized as I was flying along that I was about to encounter some little steps I had forgotten about. I jumped down them, and all was well, and all manner of things was well, but it spooked me.

This time, I'm going for the Nordic Biathlon: I figure cross-country skiing could use those big quads, too, and even though the sport is huge in Europe, it's not so big here, so I wouldn't have to worry about the Michelle Kwans of the world petitioning at the last minute to take my spot on the team. The PP has decided on skeleton, because he can't abide the skating costumes, and if you're going to haul ass down an ice track, why not do it face first?

It's Day 3, and we are both already sick of the media coverage that is all about whether someone who thought she was going to get the gold is disappointed because she blew it on one of her ski runs. Disappointed? It's the Olympics, for fuck's sake. And the front page of the NYT and the local paper both feature time-lapse photos of the great Kwan dive in yesterday's practice. What no one has mentioned is that it's the marketing team at Dos Equis who really blew a shot at gold this year.

Queuing all tracks ... please wait.

Don't be fooled: you think you are over your cold because you can manage to be out of bed for more than 20 minutes at a time. You go about your day--try to do your job, even get back into the pool. Then nearly 2 weeks later you still feel like ass. Take it from me: there is not much you can except to embrace the post-nasal drip.

Well, that, and list your Friday Random 10:

1. Jethro Tull, "Aqualung" (Aqualung) (Is it some kind of song that the first track to pop up contains one of pop music's few references to nasal congestion?)
2. Led Zeppelin, "No Quarter" (Houses of the Holy)
3. The Beatles, "Honey Pie" (The Beatles)
4. The Village People, "Go West" (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert)
5. Celeste Mendoa y los Papines, "Papá Ogún" (Cuba Classics 2)
6. Tony Bennett & Ray Charles, "Evenin'" (Playing with My Friends)
7. Lyle Lovett, "You Were Always There" (My Baby Don't Tolerate)
8. k. d. lang, "One Day I Will Walk" (Hymns of the 49th Parallel)
9. Artur Pizarro (piano) Rodrigo: "Estampas (4) andaluzas, for piano: Barquitos de Cádiz (Rodrigo: Piano Music, Naxos)
10. Mississippi John Hurt, "Blue Harvest Blues" (Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings)

I bet your random mix could not be as mainstream as mine!

You don't really care for music, do you?

New mix up at Art of the Mix. You can see it was partly inspired by last Friday's Random 11, and a few other randomizing sessions, where I heard some conversations among tracks I would not have thought of.

If you look at all those names and diacriticals and don't recognize them, then do some exploring at North Side: tracks 2, 9, 12, and 19 all come from their recordings. Hedningarna is a Swedish group, and this song comes from Karelia Visa, an album (recorded with two Finnish musicians) chronicling a "visit" to Karelia, a disputed region between Finland and Russia. Väsen is also Swedish, and Troka is Finnish. Tapani Varis plays the Jew's harp: it still surprises me how comfortably that instrument speaks to the didgeridoo. Back in the mid-90s I couldn't make a mix without some of these folks or their ilk.

Tracks 13 and 14 are both from Tzadik albums. I've written about the Charmings before.

As for the Argentines, see my tribute. (Track 6 is from the album of Piazzolla remixes.)

And thanks to freeman for introducing me to Les Claypool.

Friday Random 11: I wouldn't live there if you paid me to.

I was going to go to the gym today, but fuck it: I am still not feeling completely well from last weekend's phlegmatic deluge. Instead I'll give a little work-out to my Zen Touch, and jump on the Friday Random 10 bandwagon.

But mine goes up to 11!

1. Talking Heads, "The Big Country" (More Songs About Buildings and Food)
2. King's Consort, Vivaldi: Concerto in F major, RV 97, 2. Largo (Concerti con molti istromenti)
3. Matthew Herbert, "Fiction" (Goodbye Swingtime)
4. Daniel Barenboim, Beethoven: Piano Sonata, No. 17 in D minor, Op. No. 2 "The Tempest," 2. Adagio (Piano Sonatas 14, 26, 17)
5. Taraf de Hardouks, "Green Leaf, Clover Leaf" (Band of Gypsies)
6. Philip Pickett & the New London Consort, "Alte clamat Epicurus (CB 211)" (Carmina Burana, Vol. 1) NOTE: do not confuse this recording from the original manuscripts with the Carl Orff piece.
7. Glenn Gould, Variation 17 (Goldberg Variations, 1955)
8. Django Reinhardt, "Minor Swing" (The Best of Django Reinhardt)
9. Talking Heads, "City of Dreams" (Sand in the Vaseline, disc 2)
10. k. d. lang, "Tears Don't Care Who Cries Them" (Shadowland)
11. Dogs Die in Hot Cars, "Godhopping" (Please Describe Yourself)

Given that my player presently holds 9,926 tracks, I would not have bet on 2 Talking Heads tracks coming up this quickly. But given how good the Carmina Burana and Matthew Herbert and Django Reinhardt and Taraf de Hardouks all sounded together, I'm already beginning a new mix.

Have a fine weekend, your own selves.

Which is worse?

Perhaps you can help me and the PP resolve a dispute, which raged last night while we were drinking wine at a local establishment and waiting for our food to come.

This place has had its share of auditory identity crises: its soundtrack began as cool jazz, and not smooth jazz mind you, but some good stuff. Then the owner decided he wanted the place to be more relaxed, not competing with the more upscale places in town, so he casualified the menu, and switched to CDs of The Eagles. One time lately they were playing Talking Heads. But last night it was some kind of probably satellite Lite Rock.

The PP challenged my characterization of it as Lite Rock, but that is not what was really at issue over dinner.

What was at issue was who was lamer, Hall & Oates or Phil Collins. Please note as you deliberate that we are not talking about Phil Collins of Genesis, but Phil Collins solo. And I was not really thinking about Phil Collins of the song about his drowned friend and the person who did not help. I was thinking of "One More Night" and "Sussudio" and "I Wish It Would Rain Down" or whatever that song is called and "A Groovy Kind of Love."

A what kind of love?

"But did you ever own a Hall & Oates album?" the PP asked, as if this would intimidate me into admitting he was right. I said I did, he said he did too, and then said "See??" which I did not. He later added that they were just "smarmy."

But Phil Collins was so cliche, I said.

The PP gave me this look.

So, Dear Readers, what do you think?

It's so hard to choose.

I came across this, reposted on Ian Williams' blog. Heh. So of course I had to check it out. Worth it. Then the big question is, which one do I steal and post on my blog? This one or this one, for a little self-deprecating irony? Or this one, in recognition of the act itself? This one, because it may be true?

No way. It has to be this one:

An Open Letter to Pastry-Eating Michiganders

It is that time of year, where the hits to this humble blog come not from disappointed Penn State fans, but from people anticipating Mardi Gras. So here is my open letter to them, and to all of you out there in furyland:

Dear all who reach this page through a google search on "paczki" and "calories":

Give it up.

The holiday is called Fat Tuesday for good reason. I am here to testify that last Mardi Gras I likely gained 15 pounds from paczki-consumption alone--and that was with a pretty big swim thrown in.

This member of the Norwestern U. Polish-American Student Association either didn't eat any of the delectable goodies she is holding, or she has very different genes from mine.

You, though, reader, if you are reaching this page through such a search, know that your midrif may or may not be able to withstand the donut fest that is February 28. But that does not mean that you should try to fit the glorious paczek (and the reason no one knows the singular form of this word is that no one eats just one) into your Weight Watchers regimen.

Sure, count your calories until then, or better yet: give up paczki for lent. But on the big day, give into your urges big time. That is what it is all about.

And by the way, recent relative silence has been because of late I have not been sure how to express my feelings about the turns life has been taking. Now I know.

So get up, don't fight it, you've got to feel it.

My very second memory of Wilson Pickett is not ever being able to remember that name of a lame pop trio, and calling them Wilson Pickett instead. Overpraise, I see now, although at the time it was just entertaining confusion.

For a long time in my rather uninformed youth, I seem to have believed that the best music was the smoothest, most fussed-up music. You know, rarified synth, perfect around the edges. I heard on the radio this morning, though, that when Wilson Pickett would record his songs, it was one take, that's it. What they played is what you get.

And that is still part of the pleasure of those songs--the voice a little rough around the edges, but with those great big horns, and the whole thing just about to slide off the edges. That roughness makes it real. You can understand why he was soul singer everybody gravitated to in The Commitments.

The long and the short of it is that Wilson Pickett makes you wish that you too were a midnight mover, an all night groover, a midnight teaser, and a real soul pleaser, and he gave us the tunes that let us all believe, here and there, that maybe we were.

RIP, Wilson.

Meet Report

I learned something important at the 2006 Tiger Invitational: treat it like a game.

My first event was the 200 BR, one of my real targets, so of course even though my training volume was down through November and December, thanks to holidays and conference travel, I wanted to get a best time there. And this was a BIG meet, with sometimes as many as 16 heats per event.

Warm-ups were delayed, because the morning session was even bigger, so I waited waited when I got there. Then we warmed up, which I am getting used to, even though it is about 45 minutes of getting crashed into and trying not to crash into other people, and getting lapped by teenagers.

Then more waiting, because the 200 BR was not the first event.

So by the time it came up, and I had warmed up again, I had pretty much psyched myself out.

The starter looked at my tense face and said, “It’s a game.” It so did not feel like a game to me right then: pretty much all the focus of the day and the week and denial about the week to come and the stress therein was poured into anticipating this race.

The swim was OK, but off my best time by about 1.6 seconds—which seemed huge in my head, but my starter friend pointed out after that one should not get so upset about a time gap from here………to here. An excellent point, I thought, and decided that I needed to work on my turns, which I knew were slow, and to train more—but all this would have to happen after I could start breathing again and after my chest stopped hurting, assuming it ever would.

But let me just say I kicked the ass of the 100 FR, because I was ready for it, dammit, and after all, free is not my event. But I cut about a second—the first time in a while.

One thing I realized on Saturday evening was that all the music I had in my little device was 100% psych-up music—very intense. So on Sunday morning before the meet I reloaded it, aiming for downtempo 80% music.

On Sunday was the 200 IM. Regular readers may remember that I completely did myself in the last time I swam this event, and so my goal this time was to swim it smart and stop being afraid of it, for pete’s sake. Success! Got my time under 2:50 again, which also felt good, even though it was not a best time.

And during the 50 FR I swam fly, since there is no 50 FL in kids’ swimming, and I wanted to see how close I could get to a national cut. About 2 seconds off, it turns out, but that was with a lousy turn, so I am hopeful I can cut a little time from that at the next meet.

And then the 100 BR, where I also did not cut time, but where I did keep my time very close (a few tenths off) to my best. Not a bad race, but more confirmation that I need to work on turns.

Which is exactly what I did this morning in the pool. There is hope for them, after all.

And the better music helped: it kept me upbeat, but it is simply not possible to be 100% psyched for 5 hours at a stretch, which I had tried to do on Saturday. It is a game, after all.

Off for a couple days for a marathon event. It is also game, I remind myself.

RESULTS
200 BR: 2:54.58
100FR: 1:06.15
200 IM: 2:49.28
50 FL: :32.48
100 BR: 1:19.81

Not to say which book of poems.

Treat yourself to a reading of Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days. For a subtitle it has to have "A Novel," lest readers confuse it with Walt Whiman's prose work of the same name (minus the sub, of course).

The confusion is hardly accidental, as Walt himself makes an appearance in the first of the book's three sections. There is a woman who answers to that name in the second section, too, but we're to understand the dubbing to be figurative, giving more of a sense of her role to those who named her. And then in section three appears a guy who could almost be the good gray poet, but you're never sure.

The book's three sections all contain the same characters--sort of. There is always a woman named Catherine or some variant, and there is always a Simon and a Lucas or Luke, although the relationships among the characters, not to mention their charcter, change dramatically. The three sections are all set (or at least begin) in New York City, though the first takes place in the late nineteenth century, the second roughly in the present day, and the third sometime in the future (150 years in the future, if you believe the dust jacket). And they embody wildly different genres--sci-fi, noir, ghost stories.

But those differences are mostly there to set off the similarities. The three are ruminations on the city itself, a city that of course also featured prominently in the works of Whitman, quotations from whose poems play starring roles in all three sections. They are examinations of the relationship between people and machinery, although that relationship changes as much as the characters sharing names, and the city they all inhabit. They all explore what it means to want to run away from the strange world where you find yourself, and what it would take to do that. They all question the intense lyricism of Whitman's poetry, as if trying to understand what it would mean to see the world that way. Any of the three stories could, of course, stand on its own, but they are richer together, so a reader can wonder about the blue and white bowl that makes its way through all three, or the woman Gaya who seems to maintain a junk shop bridging hundreds of years and thousands of miles.

It is easy to read this as the Walt Whitman novel written by the guy who made it big with a Virginia Woolf novel, but to dismiss this book that quickly would be a mistake. It is so much better than that, requiring and rewarding attention and investment.

Bjorn to Rock.

For some of us, the real world comes back tomorrow--and what a sad thing that is indeed.

Should you find yourself in that boat, or in a similar boat, or in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife, you really should treat yourself to a look at and listen to Jason Forrest's video, "War Photographer." May take a little while to download, but while you're waiting you could think about all the things you might do with your life if you did not have to earn a living.

Render his sorry butt anywhere you like.

Have a look at Salman Rushdie's take, in the Sidney Morning Herald, on the U.S. government's policy of "rendition" (via MoorishGirl).

For those of you too lazy to click on the link above, here is a highlight:

The US authorities have been taking a characteristically robust line on this issue. On her recent European trip, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, more or less told European governments to back off the issue - which they duly, and tamely, did, claiming to have been satisfied by her assurances.

At the end of December, the German Government ordered the closing of an Islamic centre near Munich after finding documents encouraging suicide attacks in Iraq. This is a club which, we are told, Khaled al-Masri often visited before being extraordinarily rendered to Afghanistan. "Aha!" we are encouraged to think. "Obvious bad guy. Render his sorry butt anywhere you like."

What is wrong with this kind of thinking is that, as Isabel Hilton of The Guardian wrote last July, "The delusion that officeholders know better than the law is an occupational hazard of the powerful and one to which those of an imperial cast of mind are especially prone … When disappearance became state practice across Latin America in the '70s it aroused revulsion in democratic countries, where it is a fundamental tenet of legitimate government that no state actor may detain - or kill - another human being without having to answer to the law."

In other words, the question isn't whether or not a given individual is "good" or "bad." The question is whether or not we are - whether or not our governments have dragged us into immorality by discarding due process of law, which is generally accorded to be second only to individual rights as the most important pillar of a free society.

If you're feeling silly ...

... and have a spare 30 seconds or so, try the fun "Here's Your Sign" game.

Yar.

A veritable bevvy of seasons.

Longtime readers of this blog might remember my going on about Vivaldi, and suggesting that listeners would do well to stop listening to the Four Seasons, and start listening to his one-hundreds of other pieces.

Well, in comments "mike, uk" called my bluff, pointing out that there is nothing limiting about those Seasons. It turns out mike has quite the collection of recordings, and now he has posted an impressive website cataloguing them and celebrating the Red Priest and his most famous compositions.

Buon appetito!

Happy?

Good afternoon, and here is my free advice for you: Just because you are feeling a little down on yourself because your training has been down all month and you know that in just 5 short months your big meet is coming up, does NOT mean that you should join the children you train with in a quick two laps of lunges around the pool. Or at least not if you want to have anything to stand up with later in the evening or walk with the next day. I am serious: I am stuck to my desk chair and wishing I had already invested in the catheterization.

This does not mean that the lunges had much effect on the children, of course, who (with the exception of the kid trying to come back from mono) looked all too merry as we crossed paths at the midpoint. And then they merrily did their crunches, supermans (I still don't understand why those lower-back horrors are not called supermen, but whatever), push-ups, squats, and so forth. Ho ho ho. They were not even sweating, and believe me when I say I cannot claim the same.

So resolutions be damned, don't go all haywire with your 2006 enthusiasm. Keep it moderate, friends. We are not as agile as we once were, nor do we recover as quickly.

All to say, Happy New Year to you, from me and my sore ass.