Watched ‘Spirited Away’ again last night. What a great flick.
Also rented another Miazaki film called ‘Castle in the Sky,’ which is also pretty charming, though not nearly as well-executed as ‘Spirited Away.’
It was 2-for-1 night, but both the Miazaki films were new releases, so I got two more. The most recent version of ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘The Matrix.’
‘Time Machine’ was OK. A good movie to rent and drink some wine and sit around watching movies. Glad I never paid $8 to see it in the theater, though.
‘The Matrix’ I don’t even need to write about, though I will say that I feel more motivated to walk into the local Aikido dojo and learn to kick ass. I expect this will wear off over time. 
Month: April 2003
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I found a magazine called The Ecologist. The cover layout looks like a sort of ecological parody of The Economist, which is what initially attracted me to it. It turns out to be a pretty decent read, however. More science and economy, less granola. Rawk. It comes from the UK.
The other thing about the cover is that it has a picture of a gun pointed at you with big type over: EAT SHIT OR DIE: America gives Africa a choice. The article is about genetically-modified (GM) foods being dumped on the African market. I had to admire the chutzpa of putting the ‘s’ word on the cover, and drawing the connection between the ‘s’ word and GM food.
It also contains an interview with the UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher, who says things like ‘When I first came into politics, Labour was a party which was at best sceptical and at worst openly hostile to business. It has now gone right the other way,’ and is critical of growth-oriented globalism.
Wait… Politicians can say these kinds of things in some countries?
The other thing I want to mention about this magazine is that it had an article about recent studies comparing nutrition to pharmaceuticals in treating mental disorders. The cited studies show that nutritional supplement can go really really far toward replacing many psychoactives like SSRIs. The article brings up really interesting questions, like: Is the current rise in depression and anxiety diagnoses related more to poor nutrition than anything else?
This inspired me to do some research over the last couple days. I ended up taking 50mg of 5-HTP just after waking today, and… Dayum. It’s the after-thanksgiving-turkey feeling all day long, because it’s tryptophan. This is, for me, a Big Deal. $6.99/30count at the health food store.
I think I’m going to stagger taking it, one day on, two off, until I get a clearer picture of what the effect really is. I’ve already been taking a B-complex and fish oil daily.
Tryptophan has an interesting story, too, because it’s not over-the-counter. 5-HTP is, but tryptophan isn’t. The reason? One bad shipment from Japan to the US, right after the Japanese company had changed their manufacturing process. That was enough for the FDA to invoke prescription-only status, and that’s how it remains now. -
Oh, and by the way. The apple tree in my picture to the left? It’s gone. Well, not gone. A stump and a pile of wood remain, but my picture is all that’s left of its former self.
This happened a few months ago, just after I moved out. P, my then-soon-to-be-ex-housemate, was going to start attacking it, and was assembling the tools. I told him I really liked that tree, and he said, with the kind of sly smile only P. can manage, “I’ll wait until you’re gone before I cut it down, then.”
It had gotten very sick, and removing it was part of a larger endeavor to unclutter the back yard, so it wasn’t as though he cut it down at random. -
I eat out a lot. More than most people, I’d guess. I’ve ‘blogged about it before, with the stories about going to drive-thrus.
I haven’t been going to drive-thrus much lately, since that was mainly an excuse to get out of the house, and now I have a whole house to myself.
What I want to write about now is restaurants.
Sometimes I go to restaurants alone. I’m a loner, and I eat out, so I eat out alone. I go to the ‘please wait to be seated’ sign, and some perky kid breathlessly grabs a menu and says, “Seating for one?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to sit at our bar?”
“No, thanks.”
A look comes over his or her face. It’s the look that dreads having to decide which waitstaff will be saddled with the lonely guy. The look is usually well-disguised, but I can see it. It’s there.
He takes me over to a table for 10 by the bathroom. “Jodi will be your waitress, and she’ll be with you in just a second.”
“Actually, I was hoping to be in a booth over by the window.” I motion toward the five empty booths by the windows.
Just for the briefest second, he registers a scowl. I appreciate the honesty, because the fake smile comes back. “Ok. Right this way.”
I’m not creating this stress for him. He’s doing it himself. No one wants to sit alone at a giant table and watch people come and go from the bathroom.
He seats me. “Jodi won’t be serving you, it’ll be Melissa. Enjoy your meal.”
I look over the menu. I wait. I wait some more. I wait more and finally someone wearing a nametag that says ‘Juli’ comes and takes my drink order. ‘Juli’ comes back with my coffee and asks, “Are you ready to order now?”
“Yes. I want the two eggs over medium with the english muffins and some bacon. Could you…”
“You like your eggs over medium, you said?”
“Yes. And crispy bacon.”
“Ok. We’ll get that for you right away.”
She turns away and the other waitstaff are looking at her face and trying not to laugh.
Couple days ago I went alone to a place called Zao. It’s a sort of pan-Asian noodle fusion place. Mostly overpriced, but not bad. I had three separate waiters. The first one was cute while she was taking my drink order, but apparently she had better things to do, so someone else brought me my drink and took my food order, and then a third person brought the food and would come around from time to time and ask if things were OK.
Now, there are plenty of reasons why this might happen, but all three waiters were there the whole time, and there were only three other tables to wait on!
The fear, of course, is that people who dine alone don’t tip. You bust your butt for some loser loner who’s such a perfectionist that they can’t keep friends, and then you get a whole penny in tippage. Not worth it.
But I always tip. I’ve worked foodservice; I know what it means. And if you give me lousy service, I tip lousy. So if I’m alone, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the waiter.
I don’t want you to be my friend, I just don’t want to be relegated to some customer service backwater. And if you’re going to flirt with me like that first waitress did at Zao, you better come back and flirt some more or I’ll end up crying into my salmon and shrimp over thick rice noodles with yellow curry. -
How long before this story is reported in US media?
Be sure and read the whole thing. It turns out that the pipeline is basically in tatters and would require rebuilding. Who gets the contract? Bechtel, of course.
Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil
US discusses plan to pump fuel to its regional ally and solve energy headache at a stroke
Ed Vuillamy in Washington
Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer
Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.
The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq’s northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.
Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel’s energy crisis at a stroke.
It would also create an end less and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia – a keystone of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001.
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I’ve been driving these roads all my life. I grew up not far from here, into a family of less fortunate circumstance, but managed to walk the few yards separating me from something better.
These roads, they sing a certain song that you can only hear if you’re listening. Like the AM radio. You have to filter out the static and ride the tuning knob. You make the song when you try to hear it. You ride the roads and sing yourself a ballad, but you can only hear it if you work at it.
I once met a man who drove this road quite a bit. He was old and had white hair and the kind of face that comes from a long struggle with the asphalt.
This old man told me about the song he heard. He was sayin’ that, early on, he thought the hum of the wheels and the rush of the air were the things you had to tune out, the things you had to try and ignore. But slowly, over decades, he began to realize that it was exactly the opposite. Every bit of the hum and every molecule of air was part of the song, and those were the things you had to listen to. Whereas before he’d turn the radio up loud, now he left it off except when he needed things like weather forecasts.
He’d come up with a sort of orchestral understanding of tires, and he claimed to be able to tell what kind of song a car would make as it cut through the wind, simply by looking at its shape. He said that when he met people, he’d look at their car to understand their song. He’d feel their car, running his fingers along the seams in the sheet metal, putting his ear to the hood, as if listening for a pulse.
I asked him how he’d describe the songs he’d heard. Predictably, he answered that it wasn’t something you could articulate with words. He said you could only do some other artful thing in reaction, and that there was no carbon copy for the moment of a song.
I distinctly remember the part about no carbon copies, because I had been thinking about the ozone layer, and how it’s getting all screwed up with carbon emissions. How the song of the car and the song of of the driver were so beautiful, but also so wasteful. I told him about it and he said it didn’t matter; that there would always be the song, no matter where it came from, as long as there were roads and travellers. Cars are incidental, he said.
I think I believe him. -
I’ve mentioned it before. Listen to it now:
Easter Theatre
“Easter in her bonnet
Easter in her hair
Easter all the ribbons
She ties everywhere” -
I don’t know what it is. Duke’s ‘Reflections in D’ takes me someplace. I’ve listened to a lot of music that has taken me a lot of places, but there’s something about this recording that’s unique in it’s transportational abilities.
I wrote a whole thing about Jon Hassel’s ‘Caravanesque,’ which is a sort of variation on the theme of a Duke composition, and it’s extremely transportative. I don’t really like what I ended up writing, especially since I’m listening to ‘Reflections’ now instead of ‘Caravanesque.’
One of my favorite things about ‘Caravanesque,’ and in fact the whole album it’s included within, is that it was recorded by a guy who built a special 1-inch stereo tape deck and pre-amp for that session. It’s also recorded direct to two track with a bi/cardioid (or MS-stereo) mic pattern, a recording technique that’s fallen into disfavor with the ubiquity of cheap, decent-sounding microphones. But it still makes my golden ears very, very happy with the richness of sound and place.
But even with all that, I hear Duke recorded in MONO in 1957, and I’m somewhere much more pleasant than Hasselville. Maybe it’s just the moment. Maybe it’s the last few songs I heard before it. Maybe it’s because it’s 3am. I dunno. Or maybe it’s because Duke’s a genius.
