The Outlaw Torn

"Dirty Road"

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:33:00 +0000

I've waited to say, so long to the shame that owns you

The limits are bound, there's more to be found

Inside of you

Give it some time, the voices seem heavy, I know this

If you play by the hour, it's where you begin not where you will end

Today

Yeah.. And I feel like I am living.. Where no one can find me

And I don't know how I've landed here

Sometimes I feel like those good things are behind me

Is the road supposed to get better than this?

Yes I will find, yes I will find..

Yes I will find

So long to the faith, believe in yourself, no fantasy

Discovery blind, I hope you will find, the truth here

Give it some time, believing and knowing are two different things

If you play by the hour, it's where you will end, not where you begin

Yeah.. And I feel like I am living.. Where no one can find me

And I don't know how I've landed here

Sometimes I feel like those good things are behind me

Is the road supposed to get better than this?

Yes I will find, yes I will find..

Yes I will find

Get up and open your eyes, don't let yourself ever fall down

Get through it and learn how to fly, i know you will find a way

Today

Yeah.. And I feel like I am living.. Where no one can find me

And I don't know how I've landed here

Sometimes I feel like those good things are behind me

Is the road supposed to get better than this?

Yes I will find, yes I will find..

It's the same damn dirty road.. 

Yes I will find, yes I will find..

I will find a way

"Dirty Road" - Days of the New

sure there aren't six stages?

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:18:00 +0000

the Kübler-Ross model (aka the five stages of grief) doesn't seem to have any room in it for the stage that can only be described as "so what the fuck happens now, and where do i go from here? how am i supposed to go on continuing to do the same shit each and every fucking day?"

Ænemated

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:49:00 +0000

Ænema              Some say the end is near. Some say we'll see armageddon soon. I certainly        hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus        sideshow of a relationship here in this hopeless fucking hole in the Northeast. The only        way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day.        Learn to swim, I'll see you down the fucking toilet. Fret for your figure and fret for your tea and fret for your hair and fret for your book        and fret for your dope and fret for your program and fret for your contract        and fret for your life. It's a bullshit three ring circus        sideshow of a relationship here in this hopeless fucking hole in the Northeast. The only way to fix it is        to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim,        I'll see you down the fucking toilet. Some say a comet will fall from the sky.        Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that        cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits. Some say        the end is near. Some say we'll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we        will coz I sure could use a vacation from this silly shit, stupid shit...        One great big festering neon distraction, I've a suggestion to keep you        all occupied. Learn to swim. No one's gonna fix it all soon. No one's comin' round        to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim. Fuck L Ron Hubbard        and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes.        Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies        and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck smiley glad-hands with hidden        agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, insecure practises. Learn to swim. Coz        I'm praying for rain and I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground        give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Man please flush it all away. I        wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch        you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don't just call me pessimist.        Try and read between the lines. I can't imagine why you wouldn't Welcome        any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. Suck it down. Flush        it down. 
Apologies guys, this is mangled for my own self-serving needs. 

you know when..

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:26:00 +0000

.. your network administrator is on his Blackberry, frantically googling "how to reset DNS servers", that the likelihood is you will not have the internet at work on that day

o grammar, where art thou

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:29:00 +0000

Having complained long and loud in the past regarding the death of grammar in contemporary society as perpetrated by the media, I am not going start again.

I will however vent my feelings on how the lack of clear pronunciation has widely propagated a lot of grammatical errors. Is it just sheer laziness, or lack of understanding how words string together? After all, language is a little more than the ability to sequentially put together grunts and sounds so as to convey some sort of meaning, ever so slightly.

What's wrong with this statement:
If I knew it was wrong, I would of not done it.

I can bet that 3 out of 4 Americans will say that it seems perfectly fine. I would wager that if I showed this following sentence the same 3 of 4 would still think both sentences hold valid.

If I knew it was wrong, I would have not done it.

Once again, I blame the press - grammatical errors are dime a dozen in the printed media, while it appears to no longer be a prerequisite to have half a brain or an understanding of the English language to get a job on television or radio.

Of course, I don't get how blogs like these and that Twitting fandango and user-generated content media like Wiki stopped being communication forms and actually became sources of information - I still have people in the graduate course that I'm doing in project management cite personal blogs as references. Aaargh!

corporatese

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:50:00 +0000

I'm taking yet another one of those corporate management classes this semester, and I love the cheat sheet we were given for some commonly used acronyms.. enjoy!

BUPPIE - Black Urban Professional
DIMP - Double Income, Money Problems
DINK - Double Income, No Kids
DINKY - Double Income, No Kids Yet
FLY - Fun Loving Youth
GRAMPIE - Grown Active Moneyed People in Excellent State
GUPPIE - Gay Urban Professional
LIPS - Low Income, Parents Supporting
OINK - One Income, No Kids
OPF - One Parent Family
POSSLQ - Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters
SELPIE - Second Life People
SINBAD - Single Income, No Boyfriend, Abso¬lutely Desperate
SKIPPY - School Kid with Purchasing Power
VIP - Very Important Person
VIPI - Very Important Person Indeed
WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
WOOPIE - Well-Off Older Person
YUPPIE - Young Urban Professional

hot for teacher!

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:24:00 +0000

you just knew that every news item, blog post and other media interaction that picked up on this story would title it after the Van Halen song.. of course!

what news item? ok, lean in.. this has gotta be on the down low... you know how when you were in high school there was that teacher, the really young and pretty one, who either taught an obscure class or was a student counselor, something nondescript and you would do whatever it took to walk past her and make eye contact in the corridors or be in her class as many times in the day as possible, sometimes staying back after the class and making up fictional questions just so that you could talk to her?

so now that i got you going about that hot teacher that you had the hots for, what if i kicked up the hotness factor of the story by mentioning to you, what if along with that first hot teacher was also a second hot teacher at the school! double the pleasure, double the fun! aren't you wishing you were back in high school now? how about we take these two teachers and put them together in an empty classroom? ooof, i can barely look straight now, forget about typing!

anyways, transplant our story to Brooklyn, NY and we have these two high school teachers.. while the rest of the school was watching a talent show in the auditorium, said teachers were displaying a completely different yet unique and highly-appreciated talent of their own in private in a classroom! extra.. extra.. read all about it!

what i find really strange is that they were busted by the janitor! that has gotta be a first! almost every school janitor i have met is some bananas short of a bunch, lift not quite going to the top floor, or has some other weird and wild eccentricity. and this one? noooo, this one had to be on the straight and narrow and turned them in, bah! then again, maybe he tried to join in the party and was spurned leading to this fiasco. nothing quite like a janitor scorned eh? of course, this would never have come to light had he not tattled.

ahh well, high school, what a great time.. and now, back to reality

Boston skyline

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:29:00 +0000

Sometimes I don't appreciate the fact enough that this is a seaside city. Went on a late summer, sunset cruise in the harbor area and got some absolutely lovely pictures of the city and skyline

Blog Action Day 2009 - it's getting hot in here!

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:56:00 +0000

today is Blog Action Day 2009, and i'm looking back through the archives on this blog to see what i've said in the past about climate change

in the year 2005, apparently i thought there was very little we could do about it anyways, so i advocated that if all of the jargon got too much for people, to just sit back and chill with a drink and if we died, we died.

two years on in 2007, i had changed my stance somewhat. i watched Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient Truth' and got one side of the story - i went headlong into it, asking people to follow some simple tips in minimizing their impact on the environment.

and today, 2009, i still pretty much feel the same way about it. many of us have had our doubts and reservations about what we hear in the press, but at the very least there is a greater awareness of the issues going on with climate change. we have gotten the two polar opposites to come out in the open and state their stands.

as a person who loves to see the conspiracy theory behind everything, i agree that this might be a demand that has been created, and is being filled by the same people who created the demand. perfect business sense, isn't it?

the press highlighted this issue, and are now expanding the size of their press corps that cover climate issues.
the industries that polluted the environment to begin with are now creating departments that will streamline emissions and look at 'green' company policies.
the politicians who stood on the rooftops telling us about global warming are hoping we re-elect them on the basis of their stands on climate change.
the lobbyists who fought for the new legislation are now receiving your tax dollars to pay for their efforts to make environmentally-friendly policies.

so if as a result of our wasteful and uncaring ways we have indeed nourished and supported the global warming monster, are we doing enough to undo the mess?

whether you believe in global warming or not, you have to believe that some sort of climate change is happening around us, and also that as a race we have caused untold destruction to our environment.

if you agree that global warming is occurring, you're more than halfway there, and keep on making that contribution that you are, it all counts.

if you believe that global warming is a myth, not much i can say to you here that's going to change your mind - however, could you at least acknowledge that we can practice some better ways of living, and make your contribution?

UPDATE: 3:32 PM EST

Hey bloggers,

October 15th is finally here and nearly 10,000 bloggers around the world are writing about climate change today for Blog Action Day 2009!

At the stroke of midnight we got off to a great start when UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown surprised us with a Blog Action Day post on his blog saying that "climate change is the biggest threat to all our futures."

From there we have seen thousands of interesting posts from bloggers in 150 countries. The Official Google Blog provided a green tour of their campus, Gadling is featuring green travel posts all day, and Grist has a great round-up of some of the best posts thus far. Nonprofits including Oxfam, Greenpeace , 1Sky and TckTckTck have all put up new posts. Blog Action Day has been the top Google blog search today and CNN just wrote an article about us!

Right now posts are pouring in constantly. It's truly an impressive display and there’s too much going on to list it all in an email.

You have to check it out yourself.

You can follow all the latest posts and tweets on a new live stream on the www.blogactionday.org homepage. You can also get breaking updates and more in-depth information on the official Blog Action Day blog.

If you haven't posted yet, remember to include the words “Blog Action Day” in your post so that it gets pulled into the live feed on our homepage. If you are on Twitter, you can follow @blogactionday and use the #BAD09 hashtag in your tweets.

Thanks to all of you who have already posted and to all of you who will throughout the rest of the day. If you haven't, you can still register and participate today!

This has already been an amazing day and the Blog Action Day team couldn’t be more impressed with how many bloggers from all parts of the global are coming together for such an important issue.

Thank you so much,

Robin Beck
Lead Organizer
Blog Action Day 09: Climate Change.

participate!

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:26:00 +0000

whether you blog part time or you bought a crackberry just so that you can blog, this is one day of the year that you need to be aware of - Blog Action Day 2009 is almost upon us again, next Thursday, October 15th is the day and this year's topic is 'Climate Change'. this doesn't say that you can participate only if you believe in global warming - this is a forum to raise awareness about the climate change phenomenon.

note how the term being bandied about is 'climate change', not 'global warming'. some people start feeling their hackles rise as soon as the words 'global' and 'warming' are put together - all we're trying to do here is have a civilized discussion about what's going on, and what we can do about it.

best case scenario will actually be that concrete proof is found that it doesn't exist, all this is a natural cycle, and in which case we're probably all going to die anyways!

worst case scenario would be that this is all true, the damage is done, we're too late and insignificant to do much about it, and in which case we're probably all going to die anyways!

deep down we all know that the answer lies somewhere in between, and we cannot keep turning a blind eye to it. we all have our dirty little environmental secrets, and whether we believe in global warming occurring or not, we should all agree that there are ways we can conserve energy, resources, material, etc.

so go the site now, sign up and start writing.. then come back here and leave links in the comments for everyone to read what you have to say on October 15th.

hockey's back!

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:54:00 +0000

it's gotta start somewhere, it's gotta start sometime..
what better place than here, what better time than now..
all.. hell.. can't stop us now!

"Guerrilla Radio" - Rage Against The Machine

Buffalo Sabres hockey starts up again tonight, home against the Canadiens for Game 1.

Not too many changes to the team form last year - bywords being grit and accountability, with additions of some veterans and journeymen who aren't afraid to drop the gloves and duke it out.

I'm more excited about the kids coming up - 6'7", 19 yr. old and sporting the nickname Chara Lite, here comes Tyler Myers! also South Buffalo native Time Kennedy makes the opening day roster and you know pocket rocket Nathan Gerbe will be in BUffalo more than in Portland.

After two seasons of not making the playoffs, this is it - playoffs this year or else break up the lineup and start afresh.

Let's Go Sabres!!!

to look or not to look..

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:07:00 +0000

poor David Beckham, man can't catch a break!

i wouldn't let my eyes wander if my missus was like this!

trading in your clunker?

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:31:00 +0000

this Cash-for-Clunkers program is pretty interesting, and stepping on the gas now. recently the program asked the government for more money as it was really catching on.

today i saw something though, some data released on the types of vehicles being traded in and what is being bought should not be a surprise to anyone..

every single one of the top ten traded in cars is an american-built car, for the most part SUVs and soccer mom wagons. now what does this tell you how highly people view these cars now, after they were all the rage a few years ago. i think it's a sign that the boom is over and the recession has kicked in. at least it appears people are getting fiscally responsible now.

The Top Ten Trade-Ins:

1. 1998 Ford Explorer

2. 1997 Ford Explorer

3. 1996 Ford Explorer

4. 1999 Ford Explorer

5. Jeep Grand Cherokee

6. Jeep Cherokee

7. 1995 Ford Explorer

8. 1994 Ford Explorer

9. 1997 Ford Windstar

10. 1999 Dodge Caravan

The Top Ten New Cars:

1. Ford Focus

2. Honda Civic

3. Toyota Corolla

4. Toyota Prius

5. Ford Escape

6. Toyota Camry

7. Dodge Caliber

8. Hyundai Elantra

9. Honda Fit

10. Chevy Cobalt

medical schmedical

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:41:00 +0000

it was too good to last. i have no idea why it came as a surprise to me that i was not invincible. that in itself should tell you how surprised i was when the doctor handed me the report.

so now, in with portion control, and reading nutrition facts,

out with the steak, and sixpacks of beer,

here comes the elliptical, and the wine rack,

and there goes the gizzards, pepperoni and salami..

old dog, new tricks

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:03:00 +0000

..
But if I could change
Then I'd really be amazed

'Amazed' - The Offspring, from Ixnay on the Hombre

building a winning mentality

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:17:00 +0000

German people have for long carried the reputation of efficiency and doing things the right way. it also appears that this is not accidental, and is intentionally inculcated in them while still in their youth. if you are so inclined, you could read the following article about how the German youth football (soccer if you will) teams have turned things around since the early part of this decade.

the point i am trying to convey is aptly driven home in this excerpt - (the coach mentioned here, Matthias Sammer, had a distinguished career as a German international footballer playing 74 games for the national team and captaining the team to the Euro 96 title. his playing career as a midfielder ended soon after with a serious knee injury. he is widely acknowledged as having an insightful and analytical vision and a knack for tactical brilliance.)

The final push probably came in April of 2006, when Matthias Sammer was made the DFB's director of football. He spent large parts of the next years demanding a stronger winning mentality of the junior sides. It seemed to run counter to the prevailing notion that youth football should be about development, not winning, but Sammer felt differently.

"We have explicitly stated that winning titles is our aim in youth football," he said, "because certain character traits are part of the learning curve as well. We cannot just concentrate on conditioning, technical skills and tactics - we have to intensify our focus on a player's personality. Players can build a winning mentality only through experience. Once you've had the experience of winning in youth football, you want to have it again."

this thing about building winners - it goes beyond sport. everyone blanches when you mention competitive kids, because every one of us ran into a couple of them in their own schooling lives and beyond. however, i see a distinct difference between being competitive and being a winner. competitors are people who fight tooth and nail and always give everything they have, and only go down kicking and screaming. winners, however, are an elite level, who always seem to have something more. that little extra splash of gas in the tank for the afterburners on the home stretch. that 'finisher' mentality to seal the deal when doubt starts creeping in.

i think it's important that people win in their lives - this gets the bug in your brain as Sammer notes. character traits are not rigid and can be molded over time, more easily so for the youth. what's best about this is that it's never too late though - you can start changing things right now. however, you need to want this, because if there is any one characteristic that sets winners apart from any other half-witted clowns is the desire for success.

three and counting

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:27:00 +0000

the gf and i just celebrated our third anniversary

we're not breaking any longlasting records yet, but we're getting there!

mother's day, live from boston

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:18:00 +0000

only that mother's day was actually mother's fortnight.

mom made the flight up from kenya for a fortnight - i'm not sure if she was trying to get away from dad, or he was glad to be away from her, but it apparently worked out both ways. i, of course, was glad to see her as we hadn't met since early '05 and i was getting quite tired of my limited repertoire of indian food.

one thing - as your parents get older, jet lag hits them harder. do not make the mistake of judging how they are doing by the first glance as they walk out in the Arrivals terminal lugging cartloads of stuff they think you might need after an eighteen hour trip. needless to say, even if you are worried how they look, do not vocalize what you feel.

this was her first trip out to the States, and she took it like a trooper. no amount of restaurants we took her to would faze her - she loved Mexican food, wasn't thrilled with Japanese sashimi, piled it on at the Chinese buffet and polished off a whole plate of homestyle Italian pasta. we walked around in Boston in the Common, and walked the two miles of the Freedom Trail.

she was never a big one for sightseeing or experimenting, but if she felt any culture shock coming here she sure didn't show it. most of my older colleagues at work thought she was 'just daaahling'. she wasn't impressed by the spring New England weather either, but who could blame her, neither am i.

anyways, by the end of the two weeks she did have the restless look in her eye, like she wanted to go back home, and back to dad, i guess! it was good to see her again, (.. cue nostalgia..) and definitely made me miss being back home.

the mighty Opeth

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:44:00 +0000

i'm not normally a death metal fan, so going to watch Opeth with Enslaved opening for them was a bit of a leap.

let me start way back, in 2004, when a friend of mine introduced me to Opeth - now this friend listened to a lot of alternative and stuff, so i really held no hopes for this oddly-named band.. Opeth indeed! anyways, i listened to an album called 'Damnation', which only served to confuse me more because it was nothing like what death metal should sound like! "windowpane" was the first song (and remains a personal fave to date), and it left me hungry for more. so i moved on to 'Deliverance', and now it was all making sense, because "master's apprentices" was what death metal was supposed to sound like! and thus started a long drawn out tryst with Scandinavian metal..

NB - open the youtube links and listen while you read, it's like those talking books for kids!

the show was at the House of Blues in Boston (whose praise i have sung elsewhere on this blog). Enslaved is one of the better Norwegian death metal bands around, and their set was short, loud and bone-jarring. how better to describe it?

what i really liked about Opeth's set was that they moved freely between their albums and played a tight set. lead singer Mikael Åkerfeldt seriously needs to think about a career as a stand-up comedian post-Opeth - he often had the crowd laughing into it's beers with his irreverent cracks about Yngwie Malmsteen, body odor, feline pets, roadies, topless girls and ill-fated moshpits.

but i digress, because Åkerfeldt currently is doing what he does best - he sings and he plays really good music. the band stretched out their already long songs into tantric solos and blissful harmonies interspersed with a staccato double-bass that tattooed his haunting vocals into your ears. excellent stuff. i highly recommend the live albums 'Lamentations (Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire 2003)' and 'The Roundhouse Tapes' for your listening pleasure if you were so inclined.

i have to thank the internets for the setlist, because i don't know enough of their songs to commit to memory what their songs are called - they played nearly two hours non-stop - Heir Apparent, Ghost of Perdition, Godhead’s Lament, The Leper Affinity, Credence, Hessian Peel, Closure, The Night and the Silent Water, The Lotus Eater and for the encore was Deliverance. here's a fuzzy picture taken from the internets once again from the Boston show..

yowza!

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:29:00 +0000

i happened upon a blog of someone who is definitely one of the best contemporary illustrators around.. and (not) oddly enough, not enough people know about him either!

Rob Ullman (see bio) specializes in creating comics, usually featuring hot gals, sometimes in hockey jerseys.. what's not to like eh?! check out his blog Atom Bomb Bikini.. his book's gonna be out soon, you definitely want to get that!

i leave you with two more pics.. one a beginning sketch and one a final product.. a nod to my beloved Sabres and a toast to the champions Penguins

undo the edumacation

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:02:00 +0000

the wonders of the Internet never cease. colleges have been offering distance courses for a while now. even graduate level courses have gone fully online - i can attest to that, i'm about 2/3rds of the way through in a Masters program in Project Management from Boston University. some of the best universities have now gotten together to share for free full course lectures and other class material on the web. and when i say best, i do mean Ivy League level and all, not your Phoenix and DeVries 'Universities'..

in their own words -

Our Mission: Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world class education.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone.

i've been browsing through the site downloading material at will.. not because i enjoy studying and putting my head through the wringer out of sheer, masochistic pleasure, but only becausehere is a chance to learn for free, at my own pace, some of the things that i always wanted to learn about - right now i'm downloading coursework on Introduction to Biomedical Engineering & Introduction to Astrophysics

so go on, find some courses or lectures that interest you and broaden your mind!

the hockey wilderness

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:38:00 +0000

for the second year running my beloved Sabres will be roaming the badlands as the elite continue into the spring competing for playoff hockey

they finished off the season on a tear, falling short by a meager two points yet again.. lots of "if only.." and "what could have happened if.." but alas, it'll be in vain

the one thing that did give me immense pleasure was smacking hated rivals and playoff bound Boston Bruins 6-1 in a home game to close out the season

oh well, hope springs eternal.. bring on the next season!

Michael Crichton

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:06:00 +0000

this is coming on a year late, but i still wanted to make a note of it. Michael Crichton's passing away did not hit me very hard at first. it was more like a "oh. ok, RIP dude." moment until the other day when i was killing time browsing through the used books section at the Brattle Bookstore when i came upon a couple of Crichton's books. i took a moment to pause and reflect.

i read Andromeda Strain about the same time as the first Jurassic Park movie came out (early '90s), and i remember being quite shocked that Andromeda Strain was actually written in 1969! and as simply as that, i was hooked by the thought that microorganisms could be intelligently trained as described in the book. i was never a huge fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, so i pointedly avoided those. then i discovered that Crichton had written other books too (remember, this was pre-Internet - the only way you knew what a writer's earlier works were was by looking at the reticent page between the title and the dedication pages).. i started haunting my friends' bookshelves looking for the name Crichton to pop up.. Congo, The Terminal Man, Sphere, The Great Train Robbery.. his spectrum fascinated me, he dabbled with time travel, structural technology, biomaterials, science fiction and space adeptly and seamlessly. for a growing teenage mind this was fascinating - skipping across genres is not something i could comprehend that easily. it's like you love vanilla ice cream. you also love chocolate ice cream. and then one day you realize that you could have both! not just one scoop of one on top of the other, but in swirls, like you'd get out of the machine. wow!

Congo was two borders away - so the story resonated easily. The Terminal Man answered a few questions on what we think and how we think. Sphere expounded my uneasiness with water and depths. The Great Train Robbery i have read multiple times, what a fantastic and daring heist! i have recreated and replayed that scene when Pierce waits for the policeman to go to the bathroom to sneak in with the key.. fantastic! what an amazing tool books are, letting you build scenarios in your own head. the movie completely chewed up this scene, turning a delicious juicy pork chop into a dry wedge of petrified cardboard. in fact i only just watched Eaters of the Dead / The 13th Warrior about a month ago and loved that too.

i would go on to say that some of his books molded me in my formative years, giving me insights and opinions that i had not seen or heard yet, filling me with a healthy curiosity for the marvels of science.

i went on to college with my mind made up that engineering was what i wanted to do. then i read Airframe, and that blew my mind away. once again his theme of man-machine interaction gone wrong reared its head. they should have added Crichton as a writer to the Terminator franchise! his next book Timeline was a delightful romp through time, back to the Dark Ages. the time continuum warp is always good fodder for a book.

his next book came when i had just moved to Buffalo, NY and was starting grad school. i was still unsure what i really wanted to do for my graduate thesis at the time. and then two things happened in almost consecutive weeks. i was auditing a class on biomaterials, not sure what it would be about and met a professor unlike any other i had met. Dr. B made sitting in class for three hours a fun experience. getting to play in his lab was another 'high' all on its own. soon after that i read Prey.

Prey equally horrified and fascinated me. it was my first exposure to nanoparticles and the possibilities they presented. i came up with a few ideas, went to see Dr. B and in a few days we had the beginnings of a thesis. i was completely engulfed by swarm theory and i was thrilled to find out how far technology had come.

State of Fear followed, where he addresses the elephant in the room that no one seems to see - global warming and other environmental issues. the last book of his i read was Next, which comes back to an old favorite theme of his - genetics. it delves into the murky world of venture capitalism and patent protection, very contemporary issues again.

i hear Mr.Crichton has one last card up his sleeve, to be played later this year - Pirate Latitudes is a finished manuscript one of his assistants found on his computer after he died. this book follows in the vein of the Great Train Robbery, but looks in depth at one of my favorite themes of all time - pirates! hopefully his treatment of the story will not have received the effluent-wash that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise tainted everything with - i'd like to see more young Jim Hawkins & crusty Long John Silver in his book and less of bumbling Cap'n Jack Sparrow & now-busty, now-not-so-busty Elizabeth Swann.

thank you Michael Crichton, you changed my life and opened up many doors. rest in peace, and enjoy the company in Valhalla.

10 Years opening for Shinedown

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:03:00 +0000

went to watch 10 Years open for Shinedown at the newly opened House of Blues in Boston, opposite the fabled Fenway Park - home of the Boston Red Sox. some band called Halestorm curtain-raised for both, but i'm glad we missed them - i checked out their Myspace page and they sounded way too much like Flyleaf who i detest passionately.

anyways.. i must say i do like how the House of Blues have done up the Boston location.. it looks fantastic, and is very band-oriented & crowd-friendly. three levels, with the main floor being the biggest and pretty good sightlines from almost anywhere on the floor. the lower and upper balconies are smaller but have great views too. lots of bars sprinkled all over the place so that you're never more than a few yards away from an overpriced drink. the sound system is pretty good though, loved the small club feeling you get there, even though i believe it holds close to 5,000 people.

10 Years have developed quite a bit since i last saw them a few years ago. they have definitely improved their stage presence and played a nice, tight set. they could do with a little more crowd interaction, but then again, they have never been a band that needed audience participation to play their music. they focused primarily on their new album 'Division', which has some excellent tracks on it. musically they have developed from their 'Wasteland' years, and you can hear the progression on songs like "Actions & Motives", "Beautiful", "Russian Roulette" & "11:00am (Daydreamer)".

now Shinedown is one of those bands which is basically the lead singer and a procession of people filling in the other positions. fortunately, Shinedown is one of the better bands in that category, and also have had some continuity in the drummer role too. singer Brent Smith is a showman par excellence - his vocal range is stunning and it appears he has been learning about stage presence from one of the greatest showmen of all time, Ozzie Osbourne. he was full of stories and encouraged the crowd to get into it between songs

i prefer Shinedown's older songs to their newer two albums, but since they are promoting the new album 'The Sound Of Madness' one had to plow through some of the mushier stuff - yes i said mushy, since Shinedown does an equal number of ballads, a few of which are tolerable. all in all a good show, and both 10 Years and Shinedown are worth going to see.

had to leave before the end because of the vagaries of the Boston commuter rail system by which the last train home to the suburbs on a Saturday night is at 11:30pm.. go figure?!

to the opera

noreply@blogger.com (s!) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:52:00 +0000

check off one more from the list of things to do at least once in my life even though i think i'm not really going to enjoy doing it, and add it to the list of things that i didn't think i'd like but surprisingly it was actually quite fun'. culturification can be quite entertaining too, luckily!

we'd gone to the opera a couple of weeks ago.. yes, you read right, the opera. it wasn't one of the classic ones, a la Figaro Figaro Figaro, Fi-Ga-Rooooo.. but still pretty good. this one was called 'Rusalka' by Czech writer Anton Dvorak - for synopsis and a bit of cultural background, hop on over to the Wizard's page..

it wasn't as snooty as i had feared it would be, the upper crust and cognoscenti hobnobbed freely with the rednecks and bourgeois.. enough so that i believe i will be going back again. the balcony provided an awesome view with reasonably priced tickets, though the leg room was more appropriate for a horde of first graders.. luckily no act was longer than an hour, so there was desperately-needed intermissions to stretch the appendages.