Absolutely Unique

Have you ever sat in traffic listening to your favorite CD and wondered "is anyone else in the world sitting in their car listening to this exact song at this exact moment?" What are the chances?

Well there are nearly a billion cars on the roads of the world and, assuming that your favorite CD is at least a gold record, one million of those cars could contain that CD. Even if only one tenth of those CDs made it into cars, and only one one hundredth of the cars containing the CD are currently being driven, that's still 1,000 cars simultaneously being operated with the potential of listening to your same song. That's not terrible odds... of course you could add levels of complication like "...driving a Buick with a busted front end and heading North by Northwest while listening to..." and make the odds go way down.

There are also times when what you are doing is so strange that the question becomes "has anyone in history ever done this?" (which, by the way, if you can immediately, with confidence, say 'I am the first', you should probably stop right then... there's probably a good reason why no one else has done it). Some people get this feeling when walking on freshly fallen snow. I hate to burst your bubble but that snow has been walked on, peed on, sweated out of someones forehead, evaporated, shaken off a wet dog, boiled, drunk, and spit out millions of times over thousands of years. I, however, did something yesterday that has never been done before. I didn't realize I had done it till after the fact, but I am convinced that my actions were unique across time, space, and multiple duplicate dimensions; I watched the film The Remains of the Day while wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt.

Let that soak in.

You might be tempted to think that it's not really that strange. I assure you, it is. You think, "well, I'm sure some random guy wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt could have, spur-of-the-moment, decided to walk into the theater." But no, that never happened. I am the first, and may well be the last. I am a unique individual dang it.

PostPost: The image at the top has nothing to do with this blog entry.

Real Art

One of my favorite conversations to have with Nate is pondering the questions "What is Art?" Nate has what I would call a very closed view, basically if it is not paint (or ink or conté or the like) and if it does not possess some element of beauty, it is not art thus tossing out photography but not sculpture, that's art too. Okay, so it's an oversimplification of his position, but it's why we can have this conversation more than once.

So is the woman in the video above an 'artist'? She did scribble some stuff on paper and scan it in to her computer, but her 'art' is computer code with video driven user input. It's cool looking, it might even be beautiful, but is it art? What do you all think?

Tara and Bella

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Uprising

Check out this promo for the ABC show 'V.' If you like the Muse song you'll like the music video set to the film Equilibrium (over on my blog - contains scenes of violence).

David Byrne Interviews … David Byrne

This is a comical interview of David Byrne (Talking Heads) by David Byrne. I think the best interview answer ever is his "I'll tell you later."



Also, if anyone has this concert DVD and would let me borrow it, that would be awesome:

Don't Give Up On Your Dreams

We truly live in the land of opportunity. This is a country where anything is possible, where men and women overcome insurmountable odds to achieve their dreams.

Why then are so many of us asking the highest ranking member of this society to give up on his lifelong aspiration? We say; "everywhere that Socialism has been tried, it has utterly failed!" We list off the countries; China, The Soviet Union, Cuba, Canada, etc. and point out the poverty, the suffering and the corruption that has followed these Socialist experiments...

What are we, a bunch of quitters? This, I think, is false modesty. Do we really believe that we are not far better than any of those other countries? If anyone can do it, we can. We put a man on the moon, more than one actually, over 40 years ago! Isn't it about time for another milestone? What if Franklin, Edison or Einstein had thrown up their arms and said; "It just can't be done!"?

It is patently unfair to deny our President from fulfilling his destiny. Who are we to deprive him his place in history as the man who finally made Socialism work?

Thank You Hulu

TV Shows

I'm sure to Mom's surprise, one of the most influential shows of my childhood was a show that I never remember watching. We grew up watching --- sometimes against the rules --- shows like GI Joe, Square One, Murder She Wrote, Perry Mason, This Old House (Mom's 'show') and others. Going back and watching these shows is always bitter sweet (except for Perry Mason which is still as good today as it was when it was made). Shows like, forgive me Peter, MacGyver have simply not stood the test of time. I watched an episode of Night Rider a while back and almost cried it was so bad. I would suggest that these shows are often so bad it might be a good idea to never go back and re-watch them. It's better for me to know that the new GI Joe movie is pure crap and believe that the real GI Joe movie (the animate one) was pure cinematic excellence instead of putting on the old movie and realizing it wasn't quite the same as I remembered.

So what show could live up to my memory. For years I have made references to a show that Mom used to watch. I knew it was about Vietnam and I knew, more vividly than anything else, that the theme music was Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones. Still every time I hear that song I see helicopters flying over a jungle (the only clip I could remember ever seeing from the intro or the show). We weren't aloud to watch, but I couldn't help hearing. That song, the twangy guitar, the beating drums, that song, beyond it's words, beyond it's intended meaning is Vietnam to me. And beyond that, not knowing what branch of the military the show was about, to me that song is about Marines. I remember Pop being away from home a lot when we were kids, away on a ship, away in the field. Paint it Black, that haunting song from the lips of Mick Jagger, that song was a lullaby for me, maybe not as much as Africa by Toto was, but in the black of night I knew that the show was about Pop, and that when the show was over he was coming home.

Nam: Tour Of Duty: