Across The Tappan Sea

I haven't spoken much about the band with no name recently, partly because of my long-standing 'Don't Blog About PCMA' superstition but mostly because there hasn't really been anything to blog about.  It's a band full of busy men with shifting lives, and sometimes those lives shift right out of the picture frame for several weeks at a time.

Or sometimes altogether and permanently, as with the case of our singer Christine, who found working in a band (or at least this band) was just not to her taste, and gracefully bowed out back in March thereabouts.

Her departure solved one outstanding problem, being that the band with no name suddenly found itself with a name - Christine being the lone holdout against The Tappan Sea, fearing that it would be confused for the crumbling bridge.  She's right, but the remaining members still liked it and we adopted it immediately upon her retirement - maybe not so much a reflection of the genius of the name than the fact that it was the only name that the rest of us had ever agreed on in the four years of our existence, and we were plumb tired of being 'the band with no name.'

I've always been fairly easygoing about names.  Given that almost any band name is pretty stupid until the band starts to invest it with iconic meaning, my only requirements are that it not be too leading, not be a pun, and not be too topical.

Beyond that, go for it.

I've also used as a warning sign Ansley; a firm believer in the power of finding a perfect name who obsessively searches for, passionately embraces and then disgustedly rejects names cyclically.  Ansley is in general much more of a romantic than I am - he carries with him the scarred cynicism of the eternally faithful.  It's a gift I envy.  I lack the faith that there is a perfect name, perfect mate, perfect chair, perfect shadows cast upon a cavern wall in flickering candle light.

I guess I lack faith in the concept of perfection, which is one reason why a popular debate between myself, Ansley and Bran is on the possibility of the objectively 'good' in art.  I obviously don't believe it exists - you like what you like, and even the stuff that you might regard as being entirely without value is beloved - or at the very least deeply beliked - by somebody.  Ansley and Bran maintain that there are empirical criteria by which art can be labelled good or bad.  You can imagine the fun when they launch into an assault on the validity of Susan Boyle, which they have to attack on principle and I have to defend on principle.  The punchline is, of course, that there never was an artist that we all couldn't have cared less about.  The argument is the thing.

Anyway, having chosen our not-perfect-but-close-enough name, we stagnated for a few months while real life moved us around.  We are now blessed with a period of relative calm, so we've finally started the tiny little ball rolling on finding a singer to replace Christine.  We don't have much to offer beyond good songs and a creative atmosphere.

Oh, yes - and a name.  One lesson learned in the wake of Christine is to choose the name before a new member arrives.  It will save a lot of trouble.

D.

It Thinks it Can

Yesenia had to get up at 4:30 this morning, to be out of the house by five, to be at the office by 7:15.  Then she didn't get home until after 7 PM.  In spite of all of this, she seemed to be in a pretty good mood, but was pretty beat down by the heat.  So I suggested that we head off to Lowe's after dinner to pick up an air conditioner for the bedroom.  Neither she or I really liking sleeping in AC, but she couldn't sleep much last night and I'm sure tonight would be worse.

Picked up a very small Frigidaire that's supposed to work for rooms about 150 square feet (our bedroom is probably closer to 200), and with it on high, it's managing to make the room comfortable, if not chilly.  Which is exactly what I like air conditioning for.

Why so small?  Well, apart from being pretty damn cheap ($99), we figured that when the heatwave passes, we'll have no use for it, but when we have guests it would be good to offer them the option of not sweltering for the night - and the guest room actually is about 150 square feet, so there you are.

D.

Rant's a Brewin'

Over the last few weeks, I've annoyed everyone I know with the basic outlines of a pretty major position paper that I've been unconsciously composing for the better part of the last two years.  The basic gist: my observations on Apple and Google, their business practices and their approach to the new media age - and how it's pretty much the most important thing going on right now in terms of the future of art and entertainment - and the audience for them.

In other words: all those stories about Avatar representing the wave of the future?  Maybe, but that's a mere niche (and who thinks that the current raft of HD-TVs with glasses-required 3D is going to last more than a few months?).  The real story is in the answer to the two following questions, and how the folks in Cupertino and Mountain View answer them:

1) Is art information?
2) Is information free?

D.

Pad of I

Turns out Fiona is now also the proud owner of an iPad, courtesy of Bubba for her birthday. This is, in fact, what I am Rambling on at this very moment. Not what I would consider a typists' dream - if you type at any speed at all, chances are you do so by touch, and the iPad eliminates that entirely. Instead, they bring in the word-completion feature from the iPhone, which isn't all that useful if you're used to using your thumbs as part of your method.

Back to hunt and peck, and given the lack of any tactile response, it's doubtful that typing on the iPad could ever be as accurate or as fast as a traditional keyboard. For all I know, this may be part of Apple's master plan to wean people off of using keyboards altogether. Given how generally unpleasant it is to type on one of the newer iMac keyboards, I'm thinking that typing as a computer interface is the next bit of basic hardware that Steve Jobs has on the chopping block.

I think what's going on is that Apple is nearing the completion of the move from the most powerful machine for creative professionals to vanguard of the media delivery device era - and I'm still lagging behind in category 1. This entry is a perfect example - between accidentally triggering the number keypad, brushing the spacebar with my thumb, and backing up to replace what the iPad thought I meant to type with what I actually meant to, it took me roughly three times as long to make this Rambler as usual.

The clear argument is that this is not the device for this activity. And I'd have to agree. But of what real use is a lifestyle device that only encourages passive participation? Unless there's some major advancements in speech (or handwriting, in a pinch) recognition, the iPad has no more real creative potential than a really boss Wonderful Waterfull.

D.

False Alarm

Turns out that all that yelping and squealing coming from the cage all night was a raccoon.  Which doesn't necessarily mean we haven't caught the nighttime pooper.  I just assumed that because Wally was the one under the shed, he was the maker of the movements.  But if it's the raccoon, well, the raccoon is now gone and the trap has been reset.

Next up: a skunk, no doubt.

D.

En la Noche

We've had a groundhog/woodchuck/hedgehog thing living under the shed in the back yard for the last couple of years, and although I can't say I've ben happy it's been there (it ate pretty much all of our flower and vegetable garden back in 2008), I've generally just let it be, which is pretty much my policy with all animals.  Until they cross a line.  As with the squirrels that took up residency in the roof over our bedroom back in December and therefore signed their own eviction notice, the furry little fucker in the backyard has also apparently (and unwittingly) decided that he no longer wants to be our guest.

So what did the groundhog (henceforth known as Wally) do that finally made me decide that he had to go?  He started to use the area near the shed as his own personal bathroom.  Over the course of the Spring, he gradually turned a four-foot long crevice in the back yard into a canyon of shit.  Literally packed with soggy, seed-filled shit.  One of the most annoying and nauseating things I've ever had to deal with, and it made me slightly crazy.  To the point where, on a day where my temper had already been completely frayed by the sudden, explosive death of my not-that-old lawnmower (which made my tight schedule much, much tighter when I had to drive across the county to pick up my dad's mower) right after I spent ten minutes shoveling out groundhog shit in preparation for mowing - and, well, as I pulled back into the driveway, there was Wally just sitting in the side yard, and I gunned the engine, fully prepared to run down the hairy little shit machine.

Thankfully, I came to my senses (mental and moral) right away and slammed on the brakes at the end of the driveway.  But the incident made it crystal clear to me that Wally needed to be humanely removed by trained professionals, because I had become Carl Spackler from Caddyshack, and my next step was going to be Semtex.

So the Bug Runner - the same group that dealt with my squirrels - came by this morning with a trap, baited with whatever it is you would bait a trap for a groundhog, and suggested that Wally would get in there in the next day or so.  Good for Wally, and good for me.

At around 10 PM, I heard what I at first took to be the mewing of our new kittens, but then I realized that they were calmly asleep in the bedroom, and the sound wasn't so much of a mewling as a loud, panicked shrieking, and it was only quieter because it was coming from the back yard.  And it just kept on and on and on.  If it is Wally in the trap, he's not in pain (thank God), but he's sure not happy about it.

But I sure am.  Wally's going to get picked up tomorrow and taken to be released in style, up in Harriman Park.  Allow me the small (unbelievably small, petty to a nearly quantum degree) pleasure of listening to Wally sing his song of impotent fury for one night before retiring to do his shitting elsewhere.

D.

Caturday

A call to our former (and presumably, future) vet paid off, in that they a) have many cats and kittens to adopt, and b) have no position on whether they go outside or not, provided they get their leukemia vaccination.  You may be wondering why we didn't call the vet in the first place - well, we did, a few weeks back, but they were fresh out at that point.

But that's all in the past, and now is the future of the cats.  We'll be heading over Saturday morning to (literally) get our pick of the litter.  Fans of cute things should watch this space, because pictures will be posted.  Don't worry, I'll have them sign a release.

D.