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Up in Davis today for a work-related presentation/meeting this morning and now I have part of the day to kill before ducking over to San Francisco tonight and tomorrow.

I’ve concluded that I don’t need to wardrive/warwalk for wireless access because yet again, I accidentally stumbled (no pun intended) into a cool coffee bar with free 802.11b to remora off of. First place I unpacked the PowerBook at! I must have an Airport card in my brain or something. Thanks and shout outs to:

Mishka’s
514-B 2nd St.
Davis, CA
(916) 759-0811

Support free wireless!

This rant in the current San Francisco Chronicle is a keeper.

Could this be, in short, something that actually adds a modicum of refined grace and simplicity and aesthetic warmth to the world, instead of sucking it away like so many disposable DVD players and garish LED-spasming boom boxes and 10-gallon drums of spaghetti sauce from Costco? Nah.

And you open the gorgeous black box and lift the white cardboard inside flap, itself adorned with clean offset typeface declaring “Made by Apple in California,” and you are confronted with what is quite possible the most thoughtfully designed and pleasing packaging you’ve ever seen, not like you care about this stuff and hey it’s all just Styrofoam and garbage anyway, but still.

Doug Orleans is attempting to spread a meme about, and well I’ll let him explain it:

Okay, I’ve never done an intentional LiveJournal meme before, and hadn’t really intended to, but this one seems sort of interesting. Is the object to see whether it eventually shows up in your friends list but not directly from you (or someone else on your friends list)? Anyway, I got it from elthar [I changed “band” to “artist” to account for Bowie]:

Your meme, should you choose to accept it, is to rank the following artists in order, from COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT to COULDN’T CARE LESS. To add value to this process, you must also add one artist to the list, and remove one artist from the list, before passing the meme on (including these instructions).

The original list is back on Doug’s site. I’m deleting Jethro Tull, adding Pink Floyd, and ordering it as follows:

Pink Floyd
REM
Led Zeppelin
David Bowie
Sex Pistols
Duran Duran
Fleetwood Mac
Queen
The Pixies
The Beatles
Nirvana
Oasis

Satan’s Laundromat points to the fabulous Ruavista: Signs Of The City which “strives to promote a new form of urban tourism based upon visiting ordinary streets and paying attention to details rather than famous spots and beautiful architecture.”

What does this mean? Photos of Parisian bakery facades for starters.

I’m deeply bemused and comforted by that fact that you can purchase injera and paella pans on demand via the net.

From the “they’re getting grant money to do this?” file comes a great article from the BBC.

“Because the animals are migrating into New Zealand waters to breed, they are very randy,” the Auckland University of Technology researcher said.

“The freezer bag at home – to my wife’s disgust – is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We’re going to grind all of this up, and we’re going to have this puree coming out from the camera, squirting into the water.

“Hopefully the male giant squid, absolutely driven into a frenzy, is going to come up and try to mate with the camera.

“This is the dream – we’re going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid trying to do obscene things with the camera.”

Read further for info on how giant squids, well, get it on…

…back to Claremont?

The two things said to me most often at my 20th high school reunion on Saturday: “You’ve totally changed” and “You had the best record collection”

Years ago (early 1990s) I was pretty well involved with the LA Cacophony Society – more or less a group of bohemian ne’re-do-wells who would take picnics to auto junkyards, visit UFO cults, have JFK assassination suspect costume parties, and just generally make a cheerful sport out of “freaking the mundanes”. Lots of dadaesque fun that made the big city a little more interesting.

I more or less retired from LA Cacophony in the late 1990s but hung around on the mailing list until the whole thing collapsed amidst death, a weird conversion into cultism, and subsequent Bad Vibes. It was all very strange from the outside – seeing folks I used to know through the group freak out. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time until I picked up the current issue (#6) of Arthur, which has a lengthy article on what happened. A PDF of the whole issue is available from their site.

Also in Arthur #6, check out the long interview with Iggy Pop and a fantastic interview with John Sinclair who’s packing up and leaving the country permanently.

Well, I went to the doctor
I said, “I’m feeling kind of rough”
He said, “I’ll break it to you, son
Your shit’s fucked up.”
I said, “my shit’s fucked up?”
Well, I don’t see how–
He said, “The shit that used to work–
It won’t work now.”

—WZ

The Subterranean Fortress is up for sale and priced to move at $259,000. On top, it’s a normal suburban house in Washington state. Below, is a camouflaged 4-level underground lair that can withstand pretty much anything short of a direct nuclear strike.