I went for a really long walk last night and ended up walking by a bowling alley over at Chelsea Piers and decided to go bowling. I haven’t bowled in years… apparently things have changed. First, I get my shoes and I start walking around the place looking for the balls. I am used to the old school bowling alleys that just had racks of random balls all over the room and you just walked around and stuck your hand in balls till you found one that felt right and then made the long trek back to your lane… This place had a counter and ball designed specifically to test your finger size. And then they gave you a ball… it was so organized.

But the kicker was the automatic score-keeper (bear with me, I haven’t been bowling in a long time…). As we went to the lane I was nervous because I couldn’t remember the calculation for spares and strikes. I remember that it was freaking complicated. When I was younger, it may as well have been algebra. So I am approaching the lanes and I’m racking my brains… and when I get there, its a damn computer and it knows exactly how many pins are still standing (does anyone remember having to squint and count how many were still standing, looking at it from different angles to see if there was a pin hiding?). This thing did the math and everything. Just to date myself, I remember when the score cards were on transparencies and they appeared over the lanes like an overhead projector!

I am sure at this point I sound like a cave man that has been encased in ice for a millennia, but it was new to me.

Maybe it is just my midwestern sensibilities…

As I entered the elevator in my building the only other person in the elevator was looking at me (in that normal I wonder who is getting on the elevator way). I said hello as I stepped in to the elevator. He offered me no hello in return, no head nod, nothing. And we had to ride down for 14 floors together.

How does one do that? He had to have heard me. I understand not talking during the ride… we have been trained to watch the little light as it descends from floor to floor and be silent. But this was different. This guy was the only person on the elevator and as the doors opened he was looking dead at me. What was I supposed to do?

I thought about making him uncomfortable since we had such a long ride together. I wanted to turn toward him, hand extended, and introduce myself, talk about the weather…

Ok… Something to do while you are studying. Turn on your MP3 player, choose random and listen. Note the first 25 songs. It’s not fun if you edit (do you think I want you to picture me sitting in my room alone listening to Hall and Oates “She’s Gone” or Levert’s “Casanova?”). One caveat: If the same artist appears more than once, you can skip it.

I was rocking out to the following:

1. Roy Ayers - We Live in Brooklyn Baby
2. Russian Record - Cinematic Orchestra
3. Git Up, Git Out - Outkast
4. The Horror - RJD2
5. Instant Karma - John Lennon
6. Don’t Need a Reason - Beth Orton
7. Umi Says - Mos Def
8. Bag Lady - Erykah Badu
9. Modal Mile - Koop
10. Not Over Till the Fat Lady Plays the Demo - De La Soul
11. Ani DiFranco - Pulse
12. Keep on Dancing - Alvin Cash
13. Halftime - Nas
14. So Ghetto - Jay Z
15. 3 out of 7 - J-Live
16. How Long Has This Been Going On - Carmen Mcrae
17. Cassanova - Levert
18. Great Mountain High - Jack White
19. Furniture - John Gorka
20. She’s Gone - Hall & Oates
21. English Girls Approximately - Ryan Adams
22. Double Exposure - Ten Percent
23. Across 110th Street - Bobby Womack
24. Who Needs Forever - Thievery Corporation
25. Commodores - This is Your Life

I have been getting about 100 visitors an hour for the last 2 days from Google as everyone frantically searches for Dave Chappelle’s Rick James Sketch piece. Then at about 9:00pm tonight it abruptly stopped and dropped back to normal levels. No more Google referrals. Now when you search for it my site doesn’t appear in the search results, even when you type in unique phrases in quotations. Does anyone know how that happened?

My friend’s IM away message currently reads:

come to the soul food dinner with me today! no…i swear you won’t be the only white/asian/hispanic person. seriously. i know there will be some. besides, where are yer f***** balls? sheesh. i go to rock shows all the time. sometimes by myself. you think black people like wilco? haha. you are mistaken. it’s f****** alternative country, you ass. if i can roll solo and conspicuous (aka, live my life), then you can, ya wuss. yeah… so… soul food. mmm! today @ 6:30. $10. jazz and spoken word. downstairs. ya lazy bastard.

I offer you a truce. The stickiest of the icky. You wanna smoke with the old boy Rick James?

[Ed. Note: Real Player. A public service for all those people coming here in search of Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Story.]

As I look over the grim facts of my client’s housing discrimination case for my lawyering mediation exercise, I am wondering if I can use the fact that my client hired me as an attorney as clear proof that she could not have possibly violated Title VII.

I just downloaded DJ Danger Mouse’s experimental Grey Album , a “re-mix” of Jay Z’s Black Album using instrumentals and vocals from the Beatle’s White Album. Danger Mouse did not get rights from Jay Z or the Beatles or their heirs to use the source material so the album is not available for commercial sale (although you can download it free here).

There is interesting commentary in the blogosphere regarding the copy right implications. Eric Rescorla wonders if a program that transforms the “Black Album” and the “White Album” into the “Grey Album” would circumvent copyright concerns, assuming the person using the program owned a copy of the black and white albums.

So-crates is struggling with whether the P2P community has been co-opted into the most ingenious marketing tool of all time.

Lawrence Lessig and Ernest Miller weigh in too.

While I think the copyright and legal issues involved are fascinating, I want to make sure I don’t lose sight of one important fact - This album is really good!

For those of you who grew up with front yards… What do you call the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road? If you have a name for it or not, please comment and let me know. Thanks!

[Ed. note: If you can, please also let me know what state you live in / hail from.]

Update: Heidi has pointed me to this dialect survey at Harvard that asked the same question. See the responses and corresponding maps here. For the record, I call it a “tree lawn.” This whole survey is really cool, did you know that some people call a daddy long legs a daddy big legs or daddy (bug) or father longlegs or granddaddy or daddy graybeard or harvestman or moskeet spider or pointer or shepherd spider?

Obviously I am playing with the site again. As the blog evolved, I found that the description at the top of the page was innaccurate (or at the very least limiting). In addition, I became dispositive almost by accident. I was originally just testing Blogger and chose the name on a whim. By the time I realized that I was going to use Blogger my friends had linked to my blog so I hesitated to change the name or address.

I decided today that my blogspot URL and my blog’s name could be different. If it’s good enough for Scheherazade it is good enough fo me. So this space is now labeled Memory’s Outbox. [1] This blog has become a place for me to keep things my mind wants to let go. As you know, sometimes they are well thought-out and coherent thoughts, sometimes they are barely-formed and poorly articulated feelings. At any rate, nothing’s changed.

Oh… the name came from a Stephen Dunn poem entitled “The Vanishings”. You can read the whole poem here.

It’s vanishing as you speak, the soul-grit,
the story-fodder,
everything you retrieve is your past,
everything you let go
goes to memory’s out-box, open on all sides,
in cahoots with thin air.

=-=-=-=-=
[1] Ya’ll can still refer to it as dispositive if you wish.

So, I went to see Dave Chappelle’s Show live tonight. Man is he funny. He did a little stand up, but even when he was just hanging out, he was hilarious.

Something intrigued me though. When Chappelle came out, the first thing he said was… “I’m Rick James Beeattccch!” And then he remarked that it doesn’t get any funnier than that episode [1] so we needed to lower our expectations for tonight’s show. While I understand that the episode just aired, he taped it awhile ago. I wonder if he knew it would be so popular when he taped it, or if he only knows now that it is being quoted across the country. And how does he know? I am sure his friends don’t walk around laughing “hey Dave… remember how you said Darkness is Spreading!” or “man… cocaine is a wonderful drug…” My friends quote the damn episode every waking minute (and it seems that Bekah is fond of it too), but I wonder where Dave gets his feedback, how does he know that we do? I guess I am just intrigued that Dave seemed to know one week later that his previous episode had entered the cultural conscious and he seemed to know the specific lines that captured our imagination and will be quoted for years to come.

The best part of the evening for me was the fact that Chappelle laughed at his own skits and jokes in the way a friend does when he is telling a funny story… it made the whole thing seem so much more natural and less a performance.

=-=-=-=-=
[1] For those of you who haven’t seen the episode in question, go here and click on “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” (Windows Media Player)

Happy Birthday to The Rev. C. Rodger Walker…

May the Lord let not numbers run you
may he keep you money smooth:
dimes in your penny loafers
shine in your Sunday suit!

I have just been introduced to the AIM away message culture. I have been using AIM for several years now, but only in the last 2 weeks or so did I learn how to leave an away message. A quick perusal of my friends away messages alerts me to the following;

1. One friend is doing homework
2. Another is at dinner
3. One is in the shower
4. Another seems to have gotten into a little bit of trouble at the bar last night…
5. An away message chain (i.e. one persons away message begins the sentence and points to another user’s away message, wherein more of the sentence is provided before pointing yet to another one… etc.) lets me know that another friend had a bit too much to drink last night.
6. Lastly, another friend is watching teevee.

I don’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, I love the precise nature of the messages. I know where to find people if I need them. But do I really need to know that my friend is in the shower? And more importantly, does she need me to know? And if I am at dinner or doing homework, I don’t want to be interrupted.

I decided to test the power of the away messages last week. I was going for a nightcap at the bar across the street and I used my first ever away message:

I am having a drink at that place I drink…

Over the next half hour, 4 of my friends appeared, and admitted that they had seen the away message and thought it sounded like a good idea. I don’t know what this means for the future of communication, the jury is still out on whether I will come to think of AIM as an indispensable tool or a prison (more on my thoughts regarding cell phones later). But the fact that AIM effortlessly allowed a spontaneous gathering to happen in the real world with very real conversation and very real libation is a good sign.

I just downloaded and installed the new Mozilla FireFox browser (version 0.7 I think) and I am in love… This is the first browser that 1) works like IE 2) Contains all of the features I want (and some I didn’t even think of) 3) Doesn’t render most webpages like abstract art.

In response to Rep. Sherrod Brown’s (D-Ohio) comment that Powell is one of the very few people in this administration that understands war because the President “may have been AWOL” from duty, Secretatry of State Colin Powell had this to say:

Mr. Brown, let’s not go there… Let’s not go there in this hearing. If you want to have a political fight on this matter, that is very controversial, and I think is being dealt with by the White House, fine. But let’s not go there.

I can’t get this picture of out of my head of Powell snapping his fingers (in a z-formation) and saying Oh I know he didn’t just talk about my man!

Several moments later, Powell dragged some hill staffer on to the carpret after the staffer started shaking his head while Powell was offering a defense of his prewar statements.

Via The Washington Post

If you haven’t spent anytime at Crescat Sententia, I recommend you go directly. Baude and the gang are fiercely intelligent and entertaining as hell. Thus it came as no surprise to learn that they have asked Heidi Bond to join them this week as a guest blogger.

Not that she needed it, but Will has given her “carte blanche to be as irreverent as she likes.” Should be good times.

On a side note, I agree with Will’s sentiment regarding “The Waking.” It certainly doesn’t stand up to One Art or If I Could Tell You. As penance, I have selected another.

Milkweed and Monarch
by Paul Muldoon

As he knelt by the grave of his mother and father
the taste of dill, or tarragon –
he could barely tell one from the other –

filled his mouth. It seemed as if he might smother.
Why should he be stricken
with grief, not for his mother and father,

but a woman slinking from the fur of a sea-otter
in Portland, Maine, or yes, Portland, Oregon –
he could barely tell one from the other –

and why should he now savour
the tang of her, her little pickled gherkin,
as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father?

He looked about. He remembered her palaver
on how both earth and sky would darken –
‘You could barely tell one from the other’ –

While the Monarch butterflies passed over
in their milkweed-hunger: ‘A wing-beat, some reckon,
may trigger off the mother and father

of all storms, striking your Irish Cliffs of Moher
with the force of a hurricane.’
Then: ‘Milkweed and Monarch’ “invented” each other.’

He looked about. Cow’s-parsley in a samovar.
He’d mistaken his mother’s name, ‘Regan’, for ‘Anger’:
as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father
he could barely tell one from the other.

All:

I apologize. I wasn’t fishing for attention in my post below. Reading it now, I realize it couldn’t have been read any other way. I am going to a take a brief break from blogging. I’ll be back soon. I imagine in a week or so.

Best,

m.o.

Have you ever realized one day, out of the blue, that a seemingly silly and forgettable experience that happened years ago effects the way you view the entire world today… I did.

Will Baude is a cool cat.

I recently learned that Baude is a fan of the poetry. And better yet, Peter Meinke. He “selects” one of my favorites. Inspired by Will’s nod to the villanelle, I have “selected” Theodore Roethke’s The Waking:

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Trish dropped a mention on Adam’s site that she was thinking about discontinuing Think Inc. Now she’s gone and done it. Damn it. Take care Trish. See you round the way.

ps. To Adam: Get that novel done. I look forward to reading you again someday.

I wish we could talk as plainly and honestly today about the way things really work as CJ Marshall did in this excerpt from Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543.

“However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear; if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questioned. So, too, with respect to the concomitant principle, that the Indian inhabitants are to be considered merely as occupants, to be protected, indeed, while in peace, in the possession of their lands, but to be deemed incapable of transferring the absolute title to others. However this restriction may be opposed to natural right, and to the usages of civilized nations, yet, if it be indispensable to that system under which the country has been settled, and be adapted to the actual condition of the two people, it may, perhaps, be supported by reason, and certainly cannot be rejected by Courts of justice.”

Update: I suppose I should clarify. I am not saying that I agree with CJ Marshall’s argument (and who’s kidding, Marshall didn’t agree with his own argument in this case). But I do appreciate the fact that, faced with a shaky justification for why America had a property right to lands already inhabited by Native Americans, CJ basically said:

Look, I ain’t sayin’ its right…. per se… but our whole existence as a nation is rooted in the land we took from these cats. So… yeah…. ummm… things are gonna fall apart if we fail to keep the status quo here…. So… Yeah… Affirmed… With Costs.